Scaling gaming payments: trends, infrastructure gaps, and monetisation shifts

Elena Emelyanova, Head of Payments at MY.GAMES, discusses trends, infrastructure gaps, and monetisation shifts in gaming payments.

What trends do you see shaping cross-border gaming payments in the next two-three years?

Before answering, two points on cross-border gaming payment trends: most ‘innovations’ are overhyped or have narrow local use, while others, like crypto, spark endless debate, yet carry reputational and regulatory risks most gaming companies prefer to avoid. Impact speed varies too – trends like Brazil’s Pix take off fast, whereas PSD2/PSD3 and SCA adoption evolve slowly. Only a few trends truly shape the market.

What’s unlikely to change anytime soon:

• The big number and variety of local payment methods – requiring gaming companies to support multiple local rails, integrations, and settlement flows, raising both complexity and cost.
• The need to offer local currencies to reduce cart abandonment, as players overwhelmingly prefer paying in their own currency for practical and psychological reasons.
• The industry’s attractiveness to fraudsters – an issue as old as online gaming itself.
• The eternal question of whether ‘going local’ is worth the investment. Local routing undeniably improves success rates but is expensive to build.

What, in turn, may reshape the payments landscape:

• New local payment methods and growing competition around being ‘faster, cheaper, safer.’ QR-based payments in particular have become a must-have.
• Increasing local regulatory requirements. Games operate globally, but financial rules remain local; staying compliant is costly and requires continuous legal oversight.
• The expansion of orchestration and tokenization providers, which now offer more strategic options for gaming companies and will continue evolving over the next two to three years.
• Gradual loosening of App Store restrictions, creating more room for third-party billing (still limited, though), with more flexibility expected ahead.

Ultimately, what matters most for the gaming payment experience is user trust and ease of payment. Both become even more challenging in cross-border contexts, where margins are lower and the flexibility to resolve payment issues is limited. With some luck, the trends shaping the market today will move the industry closer to overcoming these challenges.

What payment infrastructure gaps do you see in developing gaming markets?

Developing gaming markets are regions with many players, high price sensitivity, and a strong reliance on local payment methods for conversions. Access to international methods is often limited, and even local options can be fragmented, creating a messy, non-standard payment ecosystem. For gaming companies, this means navigating numerous methods with varying user experiences, APIs, and frequent changes, which translates into higher costs, greater complexity, and more technical effort to deliver a payment experience that feels ‘local’ and seamless.

In these markets, cross-border payments traditionally suffer from weak acceptance due to higher risk, stricter controls, and complex routing. This results in high decline rates for cards issued outside the region, while local cards may not be widely supported for online purchases or often require additional authentication, directly impacting revenue.

Currency volatility adds another layer of complexity. Rapid fluctuations in currencies like the Brazilian Real or Turkish Lira create instability for both players and companies: players may see one price but pay another, and companies may expect a certain settlement amount but receive a different one.

Finally, a weak or underdeveloped payment infrastructure results in high conversion fees for exotic currencies, which are riskier and more expensive to handle than major currencies. These fees reduce cross-border payment efficiency, undermine user trust, and increase operational costs.

Given the gaming industry’s rapid evolution with new monetisation models (battle passes, NFTs, etc.), how are gaming merchants adapting their payment infrastructures to handle evolving cross-border requirements?

When a gaming company introduces a new monetisation model, it significantly changes the requirements for its payment setup. These new models prompt payment infrastructures to become more flexible, automated, secure, and globally aware, with a focus on seamless user experience, multi-currency support, local payment integration, low-friction recurring payments, and smart fraud management. These are all critical to capturing revenue efficiently in today’s complex gaming ecosystem. Because new models are more complex than simple ‘buy game’ or ‘buy skin’ flows, payment infrastructures must adapt accordingly:

• Recurring and microtransactions: shifting from one-time purchases requires recurring billing and flexible payment flows. Gaming companies achieve this through tokenization and automated billing, reducing friction and increasing player lifetime value.
• In-game currencies and virtual items: monetisation via digital goods demands instant, reliable transaction processing, often across borders. Payment systems are evolving to handle high-volume micro-transactions and real-time fraud detection, ensuring seamless purchases for players.
• Global player bases: many new models rely on international audiences. Gaming companies adapt by integrating local payment methods, multi-currency support, and dynamic routing to orchestrate multiple payment options, optimising for conversion success, cost efficiency, and security. This ensures revenue capture even in regions where traditional card networks are weak.
• Regulatory compliance: new monetisation models often create new transaction types, such as subscriptions or in-game currencies, which fall under different local regulations. Payment infrastructures must support compliance with local laws and taxation requirements, which also becomes a significant challenge for gaming companies.

This editorial piece was first published in The Paypers' Global Ecommerce Report 2026, which provides a complete overview of key trends and strategies to help businesses worldwide succeed. Download your free copy today to explore in-depth insights on global ecommerce trends, the latest innovations in payment solutions, and strategies to stay ahead in a competitive market.

About the author

 

About MY.GAMES 

MY.GAMES is an international publisher and developer with offices in Europe and beyond, with over one billion registered users worldwide. The company develops for mobile, PC, and consoles, and has many notable games in its portfolio. MY.GAMES unites over a dozen development studios with a strong team of specialists operating across the globe.