According to Tencent’s 2023 Mobile Payment Report, 97% of global players of “honor of kings” complete “honor of kings top up” through mobile terminals. Among them, the adoption rate of third-party platforms increased from 68% in 2021 to 94% in 2023. Let’s take the Southeast Asian market as an example. Mass market platforms such as Codashop and SEAGM have minimized the load time of mobile top-up pages under 2 seconds through responsive web design (RWD) and light-weight SDK integration, 40% less than the PC version. In addition, they accommodate 42 local payment methods (e.g., TrueMoney in Thailand and OVO in Indonesia). Supporting 98.5% of mobile consumers’ requirements. For example, Malaysian players only need 6.3 ringgit (approximately 1.35 US dollars) to reload 1,000 points through the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet, 11% lower than the official one, and the success rate for mobile orders is 99.3%.
Technically, mobile optimization relies on API interfaces to communicate with payment gateways directly. Following the upgrade of its mobile API in 2022, a top platform cut the speed of processing recharge requests to an average of 1.2 seconds from 8 seconds, reduced the error rate from 3.2% to 0.1%, and enabled real-time exchange rate conversion (with four-decimal-place accuracy). For instance, when the Turkish members get a refill of 6,480 points from mobile phones, the site directly credits the top exchange rate (1 US dollar≈26.5 lira), and in fact paid is 27 US dollars with discount of 73% with regard to official payment in the US market (99.99 US dollars). According to the “White Paper on Mobile Game Payment Technology” data, these technologies have enabled the proportion of mobile honor of kings top up orders to increase from 51% in 2020 to 88% in 2023, and the average recharge frequency of players has increased from 1.1 times a month to 2.4 times.
From a security and compliance perspective, mobile payments have to go through PCI DSS authentication and TLS 1.3 encryption. In 2023, Tencent, in collaboration with MyCard, launched the “Mobile Security Channel”, which leverages biometric authentication (e.g., fingerprint/face recognition) and two-factor authentication (2FA) to achieve a 99.7% rate of interception of mobile fraud transactions and a 0.08% account ban rate down from 22% for non-compliant channels. For instance, a Brazilian gamer recharged 5,000 points through the PicPay app. The payment details were validated by the system with dynamic tokens, and the funds arrived within just 55 seconds, with the probability of leakage being lower than 0.005%. In 2022, an attack in the form of a “mobile phishing website” surfaced in Indonesia. The players were misled by imitation platforms to enter credit card information, and over 18,000 accounts were compromised. However, compliant platforms suppressed such threats to 0.02% using HTTPS enforced redirects and domain name locking (DNSSEC).
In regionalized mobile solutions, Tencent introduced a “Supercell style” local payment integration to the Latin American region. For instance, Mexican players swipe the code in order to reload through the mobile OXO convenience store. 1,000 points needed only 19 pesos (about 1.1 US dollars) to save 9% over Apple Pay, and the hit rate of fund arrival reached 99.6%. Statistics for Q3 2023 show that the revenue of honor of kings top up on mobile in Brazil increased by 67% year-on-year. Of these, 90% of purchases are made with local prepaid cards (such as RecargaPay), and an 8 point reward is also achievable when reloading 100 reais (around 20 US dollars). Players in Africa also reload via MTN Mobile Money. The system automatically matches the offshore US dollar exchange rate. There are reductions in errors, from the 4.7% it was at by conventional banks, to 0.9% for effective costs of players have been reduced to 12%.
User experience improvement has seen strategies like single mobile-specific offers prove very effective towards improving conversion. For instance, during the season of “Double Eleven” for the year 2023, a certain platform launched a campaign dubbed “Double the First Recharge on Mobile Devices”. Players are able to make 20,000 points by purchasing $100 via their mobile phones (the standard cost is 10,000 points), and the unit cost is as low as $0.005 per point. Mobile orders volume in the campaign increased by 230%. Meanwhile, the platform also uses LBS (LocAtion-Based Services) to promote regional discounts. For example, when American players top up $50 or more via Google Pay, they can get an instant discount of $7. The actual cost is reduced by 14%, and the standard deviation of the arrival delay is lowered from the industry average of 8.6 seconds to 1.3 seconds.
In summary, the compliant mobile honor of kings top up service has achieved a balance between high adaptability (94%), low risk (ban rate ≤0.08%), and high regionalization (cost savings of 73%). Players need to choose a platform that is able to HTTPS encryption, PCI DSS authentication and local payment aggregation, and due to distinctive mobile activities superposition (i.e., double points + geographic discounts), reduce the unit price below 0.005 US dollars per point, but with a ≥99% success rate of funds arrival within 15 seconds.