When a category like social casino gets redefined in a short period of time, game developers take notice. In our previous article, we explored the question: What is Real Money Gaming (RMG)?

We got asked a lot by game developers: What types of games will work in RMG?  We have a bunch of insights on that topic!  The second question is often: What other expertise do I need for my game to be a success in RMG? At a high level you need to handle payments, matchmaking, fraud prevention, compliance, and ensure a seamless user experience. Apple and Google do not let you use their payment rails for RMG.

So you face a choice: either build your own fintech stack or use a ready-made solution. Both have been shown to work, but the time and expertise required to build your own is often vastly underestimated.

It can mean delays and distraction from what you do best: making great games.

So what’s involved in building your own platform? 

Let’s jump right in.

Hire: Bringing in the right talent is essential with compliance expertise.

Build Strong Banking Relationships: You’ll need a network of banking partners and payment systems across multiple countries.

Know your TLAs: You’re going to get very familiar with a long list of three letter acronyms. Like KYC (know your customer), AML (anti-money laundering), and SAR (suspicious activity report).

Rinse and repeat for all jurisdictions: This all works differently from North Carolina to Nevada and from Brazil to Germany. So you’re going to have to do it again and again, a little differently each time, or focus on just one Country and / or a limited number of States.

Prioritize Security: Handling payments means taking extra care of security and customer data. Staying alert to potential scams and building a strong defense will keep your platform safe and trustworthy for everyone.

Make Payments Seamless: It isn’t enough to just have a fintech stack that works and complies with all the relevant laws. Users expect quick, hassle-free transactions. If your payment page is slow or clunky in some way, players won’t use it.

Ensure fair play: If smurfs and sharks can exploit the matchmaking algorithm or cheat in the game, ordinary players will get sick of losing and delete the game.

Roll with the punches: Governments, banks and other partners change their rules and requirements from time to time, and introduce new ones too.

Summary 

Entering into RMG is a lot more than just payment rails.

None of this means it’s impossible. There are a number of successful game developers out there who have it working right now. There are a number who got bogged down in it for over a year and gave up.

The real question a game developer needs to ask themselves if they want to access RMG. Is it worth being distracted from your core business of making great games your players love?

What you get with LinQ

LinQ was co-founded by a former CEO of a European financial institution, and a former CTO of an eCommerce analytics firm. Our fintech stack, matchmaking and surrounding ecosystem are what we do.

We have it up and running. In games you can play right now.

And it only takes four weeks to have it running in your games too.  Enabling game developers to iterate fast.

More payment methods than you can shake a card at

How frustrating is it to lose customers who love your game just because they don’t have the right way to pay? That’s why we support as many options as possible. So far that includes Apple Pay, Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express and a range of local solutions. The list is always growing. 

We use cascading authorization to push players to the best options based on their location.

Multiple cash out solutions which are fully integrated and allow next day withdrawals.

And it’s done in under 100 milliseconds

It’s fast.

Stay secure and fight fraud

We keep an eye on potentially fraudulent activities with unsupervised and supervised machine learning, 2FA and a proprietary internal fraud monitoring system. 

Compliance? It’s on us

LinQ is designed in a way so that game developers don’t even have to worry about compliance. We’re a buffer between you and the banks, so that all the compliance burden falls on us and only we are held liable if any of it goes wrong.

We use geolocation and geo-fencing to make sure all transactions comply with regional and national laws across all 50 US states and Brazil, UK, Germany and Mexico.

We handle the KYC and the AML, age verification and data privacy. We have responsible play features that include self-banning, timeouts, and spend limits, to comply with laws in places like the UK.

It’s all about conversion

So what do all these fast load times, multiple payment, next-day winnings and seamless natively embedded experience add up to? A platform that converts.

We make the payments as smooth as they can be, within the limits of law and basic decency.

Can we scale? Yes we can

If your game is a hit, our servers can handle the increased traffic quickly and seamlessly.

LinQ grows as fast as you.

Get in touch for a chat

So are you interested in a quick and direct way to enter the RMG market, without getting bogged down indefinitely in dozens of things you never had to worry about before?  

Good news: we’re looking for more game developers to partner with.

If you’re an established developer who knows a thing or two about great gameplay and user acquisition, you’re exactly who we’re looking for. We’d love to chat and answer your questions, and if you don’t want to take it any further than that, you don’t have to.

If you do decide to go ahead then you’re only four weeks away from having it live and handling payments in your mobile game. So drop us a line, we'd love to hear from you.