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How Online Payments Changed the Face of Gaming

In gaming, too, the smartphone has had a huge impact

How Online Payments Changed the Face of Gaming

The release of the iPhone almost 18 years ago will go down in history as a pivotal moment in not just telecommunications and technology, but in retail, politics, and almost every other aspect of human life imaginable.

It enabled the widespread use of social media, which, despite some of its benefits, is having a significant and negative impact on individuals and society in general. It has also contributed greatly to the polarisation of politics and left people at each other’s throats over trivial matters that they never normally would have cared about. It has, however, provided a major boost to small, medium, and large-sized businesses (those who have adapted to the online market anyway).

The self-employed tradesman can reach new customers through the apps on their phone and send off invoices with a couple of taps. The mid-sized car leasing company can keep in touch with its customers and market to them through an app, and the huge behemoths like Amazon can sit there in their customers' pockets, ready to be of service at a moment’s notice.

In gaming, too, the smartphone has had a huge impact. It has driven people online and helped to create more interest, more engagement, and a higher quality in the industry than ever before. It has allowed for the flourishing in particular of the online casino gaming sector, which, over the past 18 years, has gone from strength to strength.

The evolution of online payments from clunky and difficult to understand to simple and streamlined has also provided online casino gaming with a huge boost. It has become common in recent years to expect your gaming provider to be a fast payout casino, for example.

This expectation has, in fact, led to the vast majority of online casinos ditching the old 3-5 day payout delays and instead rewarding their players with almost instantaneous payouts, which is all-around good news for players. But in what other ways has online payment technology changed the gaming industry? Let’s take a closer look.

Free to Play Games

Without giving away too much about my age, when I was a kid, if I wanted to play a game, I had to save up to buy it. If I didn’t like it, I would be left with the option of returning it to the store (unlikely), selling it to a second-hand store, or just putting it in the back of the shelf.

If I loved it, I could either play it through to the end or, with certain games, invite my friends over to play it with me. Improvements in internet speeds and connectivity paved the way for online gaming, but it was online payment that really revolutionised this part of the gaming world.

Online payments led to the creation of free-to-play games that allowed players to make in-game purchases. This not only helped to generate huge amounts of money for gaming companies, but it boosted overall playing numbers and gave those of us who like to keep our wallets closed the opportunity to play a heap of great games, free of charge!

The Boost in Mobile Gaming

Apple Pay and Google Pay allow people to purchase mobile games that can be quite expensive in just a couple of seconds. They also allow people to do the same with microtransactions within the game.

What is important about this, though, is that the quick and easy nature of mobile payments has made gaming way more accessible than ever before, and with almost everyone on the planet having access to a mobile device, that’s led to a huge increase in the number of people gaming.

It’s why mobile gaming is now the most popular type of gaming, which would have seemed utterly unimaginable back in 2007 when the iPhone was first launched.

Changing Demographics

That rise in mobile gaming has also dramatically altered the demographics of gamers. Older people and female gamers are now more represented than ever before, and combined, make up the majority of gamers.

This has finally led to a bit of diversification in the type of games that development companies are making. There are now games in the charts that aren’t just first-person shooters or fantasy role-playing games.

In Summary

There are a lot of things that have changed the gaming industry in recent decades, but the implementation of fast and simple payment methods has arguably been the second most important development, just behind the release of the iPhone.