NetEase have announced that they will be partnering with payment providers Checkout.com in order to facilitate a new range of payment options into new markets.
NetEase have said that Checkout.com will aid the company with payment in international markets such as Europe, the Americas, Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia. This will include acquiring for international credit card networks such as VISA and Mastercard, along with optimization solutions to drive payment success rates. Checkout.com will also be working on creating new payment pages within the games themselves for NetEase.
Head of Asia Pacific at Checkout.com, Brian Sze, "We are thrilled to collaborate closely with NetEase Games, one of the global leading game industry leaders. Leveraging our valuable experience in addressing challenges such as fragmented payment methods, and fraud prevention encountered by enterprises in their international expansion, Checkout.com is enabling NetEase Games to achieve worldwide business development and penetration."
Payment upfront
As noted by NetEase in the announcement, “Successful international expansion requires effective localization, social features, and a comprehensive range of popular payment integration, which play a vital role in any effective game monetization strategy.” It’s a topic that has dominated the discussion around emerging markets like MENA and India, which boast a huge number of players but comparatively low monetisation rates, often due to the complexity or lack of availability of payment methods. In NetEase’s home country of China, most payment is already digital and centred on smartphone apps which make it incredibly easy to integrate payment for mobile games.
The challenge facing Checkout.com then will be to manage the integration and payment support for NetEase’s vast library of games such as Eggy Party and Knives Out. The ambition on NetEase’s part is of course to expand beyond their home country of China in order to bypass potential legislative trouble in the future, and one way to do that is to focus on the international market. However, as you’d likely have guessed, the only way to make that successful from a financial point of view is to work with payment providers that can accelerate monetisation for markets foreign to NetEase’s usual business tactics. With this deal in place it puts NetEase another step closer to establishing a firm foothold overseas.
