Vasilije Lekovic, vice president of gaming at Trustly, believes the payment provider’s new, optimised product offering solves these challenges. And it’s about to take the Netherlands by storm.
An industry-wide challenge
Typical player onboarding times can be lengthy due to verifying long lists of documents, affordability checks and other regulatory reviews that need to be completed in the background. According to Trustly, this process can take hours or even days to complete and each step causes players to drop off, increasing churn and costing operators money.
Research by Jumio highlights how operators are struggling with the onboarding process. It found 16% of customers abandon registration processes before completion. Even if they do make it to the end, there’s no guarantee they will spend: 19% of those that completed registration failed to make a deposit.
Pair this with Trustly’s research that shows that 24% of players drop out during the registration process and of those who successfully register, only one in three will actually make a deposit. This is where Pay N Play comes in; the solution boosts conversion by eliminating the risk of user drop-off.
Pay N Play works differently to traditional onboarding solutions. There’s no need to fill out any registration forms when signing up. A player simply clicks ‘play now’ and makes a deposit from their online bank account via Trustly. The best part for operators is, all of the KYC checks are completed automatically via Pay N Play in the background.
“It hasn’t just streamlined registration and deposit into a single flow,” Lekovic explains. “It’s fast and it hides complexity from users. Friction, lag time, unnecessary redirects – every hurdle is going to lose users. Pay N Play has been so successful because it quickly delivers a new user into a verified user who is ready to start playing.”
And with its latest iteration, Pay N Play 2.0, Trustly can reduce the onboarding time just to three minutes in the Netherlands.
Making sense of KYC
This rapid onboarding is underpinned by a robust verification framework. Verifying player identities can be a lengthy, and worse still, messy process. And the consequences for operators getting it wrong can be hugely detrimental to their reputation and their balance sheet. That’s why Trustly wanted to take the stress out of operators’ hands.
“In the Netherlands, Pay N Play 2.0 combines KYC data from three separate sources into a single onboarding flow,” Lekovic explains. “It gathers information from the user’s bank, from iDIN, the local digital authentication service, and from an ID scan taken with the user’s phone, all streamlined in Trustly’s Pay N Play flow.
“It combines what is available through open banking and our AIS (Account Information Service) capabilities with other KYC data from different sources, as well as the passport/ID scanning and verification that we integrated as part of our Pay N Play onboarding flow.”
Having an understanding of what each and every market needs from the product was paramount to its development, he continues. As more and more European markets are getting locally regulated, such as Germany and the Netherlands, operators’ needs are continuously changing, especially when it comes to user onboarding and verification.
Then comes the challenge of adapting it to markets that don’t have centralised ID databases, such as Great Britain or Germany.
“There are similar sources of information [to the national registries] in different territories,” he says, however. “How Trustly collects the necessary data is partially from the bank, and we’re combining this with the third-party provider data. We are working on expanding Pay N Play 2.0 across these regions in 2023.”
The Netherlands is a challenging and competitive market, but for Trustly it can act as a test case, playing a key role in developing Pay N Play 2.0, Lekovic says.
“With the help of a reputable law firm in the Netherlands, and understanding operators’ biggest pain points, we identified all the requirements from the local regulator. This helped us to shape the new version of our Pay N Play product, Pay N Play 2.0, which we’re launching in the Netherlands,” Lekovic explains.
Where can you expect to see Pay N Play 2.0 next?
While it is set to be released in the Netherlands initially, there are plans for the optimised product to hit the UK market in 2023 thanks to the expanded scope open banking provides.
And the UK isn’t the only European market that Trustly has its sights on, with Denmark lined up and a relaunch for the Pay N Play product in Germany set for 2023, again thanks to widespread adoption of open banking.
It’s also turning its eyes further afield. The business plans to head across over the pond, with newly legalised Ontario on the cards as well as the US for Trustly.
“We know that onboarding in Ontario, where Trustly launched this year with multiple operators, is inconvenient and we are now working on Pay N Play for Canada too,” Lekovic says. “Many of our EU operators seek to replicate success in Canada, and we want to make that possible in 2023.”
“When it comes to the US, we believe Pay N Play will revolutionise onboarding in this market. Trustly is already one of the leading payment providers with a strong share of wallet in the market across all the leading operators.”
“The next step to consolidate our position is to launch Pay N Play and we are exploring options to make that happen as soon as possible. We do believe that offering a frictionless onboarding product will make a real difference in the US and boost the user acquisition.”
Successful player onboarding is key to keeping operational costs low, ensuring all regulations are met, and ultimately, player retention and the ROI of acquisition. Getting this right is a tall order but with the help of Trustly’s revolutionised Pay N Play 2.0 product, the heavy lifting is taken out of the operator’s hands and made simpler, easier and safer.
Payments and fintech specialist with expertise in account-to-account (direct bank payments), Open Banking and carrier billing payments and user verification (KYC) across different industries (online gambling, video gaming, eCommerce) gained in various management and commercial roles. For the last 7 years, Vasilije has been leading the gaming commercial department of Trustly, the global leader in account-to-account payments, as well as various innovative product and business development initiatives, such as the launch of Trustly’s flagship Pay N Play product, AgeVerify, NameVerfiy, InBanner and others. Prior to Trustly, Vasilije was in different commercial and business development roles in the information security and telecommunications industries.
