PingPong , the global financial infrastructure platform, has launched its European acquiring solution for games and digital entertainment at Gamescom. A single API gives publishers local acquiring, alternative payment methods and sector-specific fraud controls across major consumer markets. In live deployments it has raised payment success rates by up to 5.3% and cut total transaction costs by 25%.

Payments are one of the least examined causes of lost revenue in games. Publishers expanding internationally usually process as cross-border merchants, which carries a materially higher issuer decline rate than domestic acquiring in the same market. In a sector built on low-value, high-frequency purchases, the cost compounds: a declined £2.99 in-game purchase is rarely retried, and a failed subscription renewal turns a paying player into a lapsed one without either side noticing. Studios spend years on retention and pricing, then lose players at the checkout in markets they have never tested. The gap between a cross-border decline rate and a local one is not a rounding error, it is the difference between a title that works in a market and one that never fully launches.

Multi-levelled solution

Local acquiring, not cross-border processing. PingPong holds 82 payment licences and regulatory approvals worldwide and acquires locally in its major markets. In Europe it connects directly to the local Visa and Mastercard schemes rather than routing transactions offshore, which changes how issuers assess and authorise them.

Payment methods built around local behaviour. More than 160 local payment methods are supported through relationships with over 260 banks, card schemes and financial institutions. In Europe that includes Wero, Klarna, Skrill and PayPo, reaching the wallet, instalment and account-to-account users who drive conversion in individual markets and often do not pay by card at all.

Routing and risk tuned to games. Smart routing selects the path most likely to authorise each transaction, and risk models are trained on gaming and digital entertainment traffic rather than generic e-commerce. Generic models over-decline what games generate, including rapid repeat purchases, whale spending and account top-ups, while under-detecting the friendly fraud and chargebacks specific to digital goods.

Subscription billing, renewal management, reconciliation and treasury sit on the same platform, so publishers run one integration rather than a separate payments stack in every territory.

The solution is already used by more than 70% of Asia’s 30 largest games companies. In a recent European expansion, a leading publisher moved to PingPong’s local acquiring, smart routing and sector-specific risk model, raising overall payment success rate by 5.3% and cutting total transaction costs by 25%.