A recent study by PayNearMe has revealed that igaming players feel the transaction process for depositing and withdrawing funds with operators takes too long.
The survey discovered that igaming players want more payment options to avoid disrupting play, and that discomfort with sharing personal information with operators is a barrier in the payment process.
Releasing a consumer igaming study titled “Understanding the iGaming Payment Experience: What US Bettors Want in the Deposit and Withdrawal Process”, PayNearMe surveyed 2,051 igaming bettors aged 18+ in February this year about their payment experiences, with an emphasis on depositing and withdrawing.
The study found that 46% of bettors surveyed say the ability to easily make a deposit is just as important as bonus offerings (48%) and access to their favorite online games (47%).
52% of bettors have had issues with declined payments when signing up for new igaming apps, and 17% of bettors who had payment issues when signing up for new apps left and never came back as a result.
“Our research found that nearly half of frequent players — those who place a bet at least once per week — say a positive payment experience is the single most important element of making bets online,” commented Anne Hay, Head of Marketing and Consumer Research at PayNearMe.
“When more than half of players have payment issues during the signup process, operators need to consider how technology can be leveraged to create a simple and seamless deposit and payout experience.”
The study also found that one of the biggest pain points for players is that the process for deposits (29%) and withdrawing funds (39%) takes too long. A lengthy deposit process is the biggest betting pain point for 33% of frequent bettors, while 29% say it is a potential reason for leaving an app.
Nearly 1 in 3 bettors (32%) say they would make more frequent large deposits if they had access to their preferred deposit type. 64% say having PayPal as a payment option to make deposits is important, as well as CashApp (56%), Venmo (48%), Google Pay (47%), and Amazon Pay (46%).
49% of bettors would play and withdraw more often if they could use their preferred withdrawal method. Failed deposit attempts and long waits for funds are also listed as reasons why a player might move on from an igaming operator.
Survey results also revealed that 25% of bettors are uncomfortable with providing personal information when making deposits.
Hay added: “Offering a wide range of deposit and withdrawal options that bettors want not only improves players’ experiences, it can also drive increased engagement. Nearly one in three players, including 47% of frequent players and 18% of casual players, would make larger deposits more often if their preferred deposit method was offered.
“That number increases when players’ preferred withdrawal methods are offered. Nearly half of players say they would play more and withdraw more often if they had access to their preferred withdrawal method.”
When asked by SBC Americas if these igaming payment issues could occur in Canada as well due to the crossover of US operators in the region, PayNearMe’s Vice President and General Manager of iGaming & Sports Betting, Leighton Webb, believes that it will “100%” be the case.
“It applies everywhere. The way to think about it is that some markets are farther along, they do it better than others, UK and Australia versus newer markets like the US and Canada, so absolutely,” Webb said.
“To me, it’s part of best practice. It’s how you think about the product, how you design it, and what are the key pieces that make that a compelling product for the end-user. Those best practices apply to any market. Some markets do it better than others in large part because they’re more mature, they’re more established, the companies are more established, and they’re farther along.
“Just to broaden this up for payments a little bit, you also have to keep in mind that the operators are just struggling to get live in states. They’re dealing with compliance and regulatory issues so they’re having to spend a lot of development resources just to get up and running, as opposed to ‘that’s established and now let’s put those resources against fine-tuning the product, fine-tuning the payments experience’.
“That’s one example of how the US and Canada are different; there’s so much resource being put in other areas that it’s not allocating the right resource and type of resource against payments.”
Webb also believes operators should be incorporating payment options more into their customer retention strategies, especially as the customer acquisition cost increases with the US market’s growth.
He stated: “100%. If you look at ecommerce as a parallel, and if we think about each of our companies and sites that do that really well, where I’m going with this is getting into one-to-one marketing. How do they understand the behavior of the user.
“A simple example would be someone likes to use a certain tender type, they haven’t wagered in two weeks, they’ve gone dormant. How do you set up a trigger in your CRM system to message that user in some way to drive them back and engage, versus what is being done now, which is mass-market campaigns that are very broad and aren’t specific to me.
Webb concluded: “This is a huge opportunity. I would say that the marketing teams – they have the budgets, they’re focused on acquisition and retention – they need to engage more with the payments team to figure out what can be done on the payments side, and with the data that exists around payments, to create that one-to-one marketing and those offers to drive the player back in as it relates to retention in particular.”
