Why you need to support different payment systems

Hi, Habr.

Walking through the monetization hubs, you can see a bunch of publications on how to motivate a user, delay a user, how to manipulate a user in an application, how to increase the conversion of non-paying users to paying users, and so on.

I will not dispute the right to life of all these receptions and views, but I will tell you one thing boldly: screwing up PayPal payment with a credit card and sitting exactly in anticipation of the golden mountains is not enough. Very often, the user does not pay, not because he is a goon, but because specifically he cannot pay as you want, or as much as you want. Specifically, in this publication, we will consider the first case when a user is faced with the problem of the lack of the payment method he needs. Unfortunately, not everyone has credit cards, or the ability to recharge a PayPal balance. This is a cruel reality.

On the site of my friends Web-payment.ru, the blog of which this publication is posted, has enough information about payment systems and there is monitoring of exchangers, I think he will be able to help you with changes to which the material below may prompt you. And in my article I offer you an author's vision of the situation.

So, each time you worked through the monetization of your service, game or application, you did everything so that the user could comfortably convey his money to you?

From the "majority" to the "minority"

As a resident of Belarus, where electronic payments are very limited from e-mail. it’s possible to buy money only in webmoney, the currency of the local payment system, and, more recently, PayPal and Yandex. money, it seems like you have not forgotten anyone, you involuntarily think about why developers so dislike some categories of users.

Until bank cards with the possibility of international payments with automatic conversion into payment currency came to my country in full growth, the world of Internet services was completely closed to me. Now the species diversity of online payment methods for residents of the same Republic of Belarus is quite acute, because in light of recent events, international payments in foreign currency using bank cards with a ruble account are now available to us only with a commission of 30%. In the Russian Federation / CIS, now with the stability of the exchange / purchase rate of email. money and the size of commissions in the light of the latest news is also not going smoothly.

I regularly donated to one browser project, now there’s a New Year sale on Steam, soon a new-old Lumia 920 will come from China, which will need to be “coated” with all sorts of applications, and it is also necessary to extend the pro-subscription on several web services. All this was done with a "credit card", but now what? How to pay? And how to make a payment to people who do not have an international card?

Lazy developer VS prudent developer

Very often, when developing this or that service, I heard from people about such a concept as CA. The target audience is good, those who make up the backbone, those who bring the lion's share of the profit. But many forget that the voices of those who are dissatisfied sound much louder than the voices of those who are satisfied with everything. A forgotten minority that would be glad to share their money with the project owners, unfortunately, is not able to do this or is doomed to pay fantastic commissions for currency conversion, or transfer between payment systems. As a result, this translates into lost profits and reputation losses for the project.

Lazy developer focuses on CA. Prudent - at all. A small example from our own practice, a browser game in which a donate can amount to tens of thousands of euros:


Of the available payment methods, the ubiquitous PayPal, plastic and the most eccentric for our latitudes UltimatePay. We don’t take payments into account for mobile, for the base game, in order to keep up with others + a couple of times to have fun a year you need 100 euros. In the period from 2011 to the summer of 2013, they had to pay webmoney through a crutch, which allowed me to play further, because I didn’t have an international card. But in 2013 webmoney fell off, I lost the opportunity to make microtransactions during the campaign (packages worth ~ 85 euros for 9.99 euros). People like me were in the ranks of the minority, but we were, we paid. If I abandoned the game, then from the moment I had an international card, Romanian developers would have received less than 200 euros from me in a year and a half. Yes, against the background of one "mastercard"injecting this amount for a week does not sound serious, but everyone has long known: drops of microtransactions eventually turn into a turbulent stream, which is enough not only to support the project, but also bring decent profit.

But the most striking example of how you should not do it if you want to monetize your project is PSN- Playstation Sony Network. I have not met a more disloyal system in terms of accepting payment and I do not think that I will meet and I believe that I will not meet. It is easier to pay fines and state duties than subscribing to this brainchild of the Japanese. Even accepting credit cards does not help: they are not always tied, and if they are tied, then, at times, with great difficulties. Payment cards also do not save, for example, I am too lazy to go somewhere and buy with a mark-up a box with a PSN payment card, especially since they also work exclusively for the declared region. Darkness, horror, pain. We play on the PC.

User's eyes

The more actively a person begins to pay for services, make purchases in stores and applications on the open spaces of the network, the more his zoo has accounts of payment systems. Unfortunately, at the moment, developers, if they think about the comfort of the user, it is very one-sided (in the opinion of the user, of course). Here they accept credit cards and webmoney, here webmoney and Yandex.money, here credit cards, PayPal and webmoney, but here it is generally more profitable to pay through a QIWI wallet or it is easier to send SMS. Your bank card is not supported here, but here are the restrictions for the region, and a subscription is needed. Thus, we get 5-6 accounts of various payment systems and a couple of spare payment methods, up to Western Union in cash (SIC!).

Why is this so? In the user's opinion, this looks like a mockery and a whim of the developer. But if the author is cosmopolitan and is willing to pay at least Mexican pesos with a transaction of Kazakh tenge bought for Russian rubles, which in turn was purchased for Belarusian, then many users are adherents of one, well, at most two payment systems. And if you think that transferring money, albeit with a commission of 1-2%, is not difficult, some may simply refuse your product because it is inconvenient, it offends their feelings of adepts, for example, Yandex.Money, and You accept only credit cards, kiwi and webmoney. And these users will go and give money to the competitor, because he has Yandex and money for everything else, and as a result, you will not have enough 50 rubles.

How to make the user “good” so that he does not “float away” from you

First of all, you need to understand in which territory, if you will, the market, you will work. If your project is Russian-speaking, then automatically you need to add not only the systems most popular in the Russian Federation, but also the payment methods that apply throughout the Russian-speaking “world” (CIS countries), residents of neighboring states will be grateful to you. Those. in addition to PayPal and credit cards, you need to tighten the possibility of payment through the entire zoo of payment systems, including, if capable, regional (through terminals). To do this, you can screw each payment system separately, or use the services of an electronic “cash desk”, you decide.

Never shy away from writing a FAQ with screenshots of how to give you money in a roundabout way. How easily a user refuses to pay, so he can be persistent in his desire to pay / buy something, especially if he does not want to attract cash or a credit card.

A lot, by the way, depends on the billing mechanism of your project as a whole. Sometimes the ability to “bind” payment information to your account will increase the percentage of sales of additional services, the purchase of which is impulsive (taking this opportunity to convey greetings to Gabe Newell and Valve). Resources that work according to the subscription scheme usually do not miss this moment and even offer to renew it automatically by default. How honest it is with respect to the user, we will leave it to the conscience of the developers, but one thing is clear for sure - the process of parting with money should be as quick and simple as possible. Driving billing information at times is tedious at times. Now I broadcast not in the words of seasoned marketers, but as a simple person. Sometimes I’m too lazy to go for a credit card, which lies in my coat pocket, and someone gets less on their bread with a cutlet. And he could have.

It is always worth remembering that once a person got into the network through a terminal or replenished an electronic account with a card, funds from the network are not displayed with a 95% probability. Very often, users replenish the balance with a margin and if you were not the primary recipient of the payment, then, in any case, you can claim the “balance” of the account if, for example, the user plays your game or uses your application. This is already not a targeted expenditure of funds for a person, and if he encounters any difficulties in the payment process, then most likely you will not even receive this residual money.

To summarize our discussion on the topic of “how to do well,” we get the following “TO DO” list:

• The maximum variety of payment methods, from the application, from the web, directly from the store of goods / services.
• The minimum number of steps when paying again.
• Continuous monitoring of new payment methods.
• Consideration of regional features of making payments.
• FAQ, FAQ, FAQ and again the FAQ for all occasions, not all Internet-literate.

Instead of conclusions

Who is this article for? From the user to the developer, of course, not from the developer to the developer.

Was this article captain? Why shouldn’t she be like that?

Did she express the opinion of an ordinary user? Why not?

Will it make life easier for ordinary people if you reconsider the ways of paying for your projects and add something else? Of course!

Sincerely.

PS Yes, the material turned out to be purely subjective and, possibly, one-sided in places. I deliberately do not provide lists of cash desks and services for receiving payments, statistics, analytics, and other charts so beloved by marketers. I did not want to advertise them here, and the selection of a payment acceptance service should be carried out purely individually. For those who doubt about which payment systems to connect on their website and through which services to work, my comrades from Web-payment.ru provide free consultations. Feel free to write to mail@web-payment.ru.