Vasilije Lekovic, Director of Gaming at Trustly, analysed how Trustly’s Pay N Play is elevating the game for online wagering payments, as he emphasised his belief the solution is helping to revolutionise the ways in which operators onboard and verify their users.
Founded in 2008, Trustly is a regulated financial institution that we believe is today the global leader in Account-to-Account banking payments in Europe and North America.
Since our foundation, we have been strongly focused on providing the most reliable, fast and innovative products and solutions to our clients across different verticals including e-commerce, financial services and online video games.
We have carved out a particularly strong position in online gaming, where the innovation introduced by Trustly helped revolutionise the way operators onboard and verify their users as well as issuing payouts.
Pay N Play coverage continues to grow
Pay N Play is a complete solution that includes deposits, instant player verification and lightning-fast payouts. By putting the player experience front and center, operators who offer Pay N Play have made conversion as friction-free as possible.
Leveraging the power of Online Banking Payment technology and Trustly’s range of products, Pay N Play was the first solution to provide operators with KYC data via a player’s deposit. Since it hit the market in 2015, this product has revolutionised the player onboarding journey, and we’re proud that today there are over 200 brands offering Trustly Pay N Play in several European markets
Pay N Play now sets the industry standard in a number of markets, and we’re continually refining the user experience. Our continual optimisation efforts include adding new features, the rollout of support for PSD2-based APIs, and improving payout coverage across Europe.
We’re also on top of helping operators keep up with evolving regulatory requirements, through further optimising our Pay N Play product, as well as introducing new features and functionalities.
Continual optimisation to meet the needs of operators
After 13 years of serving the gaming industry, we have been able to develop value-added services designed to meet the specific needs of operators. That includes a sophisticated back office solution that supports advanced reporting and reconciliation functions and is second to none in the industry, according to our clients.
Thanks to a recent update of the Trustly Checkout, operators can now display their own logo on the deposit confirmation screen. Small touches like this make a big difference in creating a strong and consistent brand experience across all customer touchpoints.
Additionally, a recurring user deposit flow has been enabled on all UK integrations to provide a simplified payment journey and improved UX. The first time a player uses Trustly, they need to go through a few mandatory steps to opt-in to our services.
Each subsequent transaction is simplified, and this solution significantly shortens the time required for the user to make a deposit.
We will gradually roll out the improvement of our deposit flow across all our key markets, so that the users in those markets can enjoy the benefits that the recurring user flow brings to their payment journey.
Instant payouts across Europe nearly 100% of the time
Trustly utilises a proprietary network of bank accounts and instant schemes to deliver the fastest possible settlement of payouts across Europe. Over the past few years, we’ve further improved our bank coverage and can now boast instant payouts nearly 100% of the time.
We now offer 100% instant payouts in the UK on a 24/7 basis, and will offer the same level of service in the Netherlands before the end of Q3 2021. Other notable improvements include 95% instant support in Spain and 85% instant support in Italy. We are also increasing our footprint in markets including Latvia, enabling domestic instant payouts for locally licensed operators.
Trustly offers all these markets through a single integration. This eliminates the need for multiple integrations and reporting models allows operators to focus their resources on other initiatives.
In our existing markets, we now offer multiple routes to execute payouts from, allowing operators to reduce cost and improve user experience at the same time. The operators can choose whether they want the payouts to be instant or fast, or if they want to offer slow payouts to their users.
Built over the last 13 years, Trustly’s network of banks and routing schemes guarantees the most complete and reliable offering of a payout product to our clients and their users.
Seamless SCA with fluid desktop-to-mobile handover
At the start of 2021, Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) became obligatory for card payments in the UK and EU, creating a level playing field with Open Banking Payments. SCA has always been a native part of the Trustly flow, so we have not needed to adjust anything.
As my colleague Liam Colclough covered in SBC News earlier this year, Open Banking deposits in the UK are skyrocketing. Superior user experience compared to cards is one reason for this growth.
Players in the UK can now use biometrics such as fingerprint and face ID to perform two-factor authentication (2FA). Using their bank app’s biometric 2FA not only increases consumer trust, it also provides the fast and simple UX players want.
Even if they are playing on their desktop (rather than their mobile), the Trustly SCA process is seamless. Trustly supports a fluid and intuitive desktop-to-mobile handover, so players can say goodbye to multiple tabs and redirects, ensuring an optimal experience.
Staying agile as PSD2 APIs evolve
The EU’s Payment Service Directive 2 (PSD2) requires that all EU banks use standardized APIs, which makes it possible for licensed fintech vendors like Trustly to initiate payments for all EU bank customers, as well as providing other value-added services.
In many countries, the bank APIs are still a work in progress. Each bank is responsible for its own rollout of PSD2-compliant APIs, and many are still in the process of perfecting their APIs.
That means Open Banking Payment service vendors which rely solely on the APIs for payment initiation can’t always offer a consistent level of service. Operators who use API-only services could face less-than-optimal CX as well as a loss of revenue due to glitches or API-downtime.
When a player can’t make their deposit, it’s bad for user experience and conversion, and creates added stress for customer service teams. That’s all bad for the bottom line.
To best support our operator partners, Trustly is taking an agile approach during this transition period. We offer all the PSD2 APIs — if they are available and good enough.
We also have our own integrations that are very useful in cases where the PSD2 APIs are not available or not converting properly. This way, we can ensure that players can get in the game with a seamless experience, regardless of their location or bank.
Supporting compliance with a future-proof solution
Trustly has been at the forefront of Online Banking Payments for nearly 13 years now. As regulation drives changes, we’re ready to support operators with future-proof solutions.
We operate in a highly regulated market in which both local and global financial regulations must be considered. AMLD4, GDPR, PSD2, and SCA are always in focus at Trustly.
As a natural step towards establishing a holistic solution that caters to more than “just a payment service”, Trustly has now support of established external KYC providers, including iDIN in the Netherlands.
By doing so, we are greatly increasing the number of KYC sources that Pay N Play® can support on a Pan-European scale, thus enabling operators to launch in a new market at a much faster pace.
If you’re interested in learning more about Pay N Play® or other Trustly solutions for online operators, please get in touch at [email protected].
