Fans watching live sports events, both mediated or in stadia, all have two things in common: they have a mobile phone in their pocket and do not want an interruption of a matchday or race experience. While the excitement and adrenaline rush is high, the focus is on one’s team, favourite horse or sportsman; and this is exactly why the average retention period of sports bettors on an operator’s website is only a couple of seconds, a tiny time slot in which a bet must be placed – and paid for.
Placing the bet should increase and ignite, not dampen the sensation. Forcing a player to enter details such as those of a credit card will obviously kill time and, therefore, most certainly will not lead to a conversion; instead, the payment process will be abandoned.
Vast marketing budgets are invested yearly by operators to encourage sports bettors to place spontaneous in-play bets; but often these budgets are wasted due to an unrealistic user experience on the operators’ page. Thus, 41% of players consider the ease of deposits to be one of the most important factors when deciding to try a new betting platform, and 21% of sports bets don’t convert if he checkout process is too long and complicated. The same, of course, applies to other gambling sectors such as online casinos. And this is where the mobile payment option carrier billing kicks in and scores – almost literally, if we consider football betting, for example.
Carrier billing merely requires the player to enter their mobile phone number to make a payment and identify themselves on the gambling operators page; this therefore contrasts with card-based and other payments, as no additional data must be added.
It outscores other payment options with an unparalleled penetration rate since almost everybody nearly always has a mobile phone at hand and a shorter checkout flow. The ability to make a deposit instantly on the spot makes carrier billing a cutting-edge solution, revolutionising operators' in-play bets through an optimised and optimal payment experience. Furthermore, as the player is identified with his unique mobile phone number, the payment and the identity check can be finalised in just one step.
Lucrative Mobile Sports Betting
Nearly 60% of all Europe’s online bets are expected to shift to mobile betting by 2025. Increasingly, Europe’s gamers are looking to play on mobile and, more presciently, pay on mobile. When it comes to devices, mobiles are where consumers have the most trouble with using credit cards, more than 80% of abandonments happen on mobile devices, in no small part due to payments being a hassle to make. The obvious solution is of course adopting the mobile alternative payment method carrier billing.
In-Play Betting Grows
The payment option is already familiar to many users as it is applied widely for digital apps and content; such as online games, streaming and the download of music, digital subscriptions for e-books, magazines or movies. In addition to this are social media platforms, tickets for public transportation, parking tickets or even bike-sharing services, snack vending machines or electric vehicle charging.
What do these sectors have in common? Impulse purchases are often key – just like in the iGaming sphere, and many industries and international brands have come to realise the value of the payment method.
Adopting carrier billing is a chance for operators to convert impulse betting intentions and gain reoccurring revenues. Despite the strong tie with a mobile phone, carrier billing is compatible with tablets, desktop devices, Smart TVs and all popular software.
Online gambling operators cannot grow profitably and stand out from the competition if the entire purchasing process is not optimised for impulse payment and conversion. An average carrier billing deposit takes just a couple of seconds, and just like that, conversions are a totally different topic. We saw a 300% growth of usage of the payment method carrier billing by gamers over last year with our operator customers A confirmation that opting for this payment option is the right decision.
Dimoco Carrier Billing
DIMOCO, founded in 2000, is a European-wide regulated payment institute for Direct Carrier Billing and holds a payment service license from the Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA). As a trusted partner of mobile network operators, we enable over 1.5 billion subscribers to purchase goods and services from merchants and aggregators with their mobile devices, charged via the operators' billing system.
