Being a dominant banking card company, Visa is a must-have option for every digital platform that suggests products online. However, the process of adding a Visa payment system has enough pitfalls and specifics. Standing at the forefront of most actual news in finances, Login Casino continues the series of materials dedicated to payment systems that can be used in the gambling industry, now explaining in detail the one related to Visa.
Even though the modern world is standing on the edge of digital money and cryptocurrencies’ vast implementation, billions of people use credit and debit cards as the primary object for payments. Having a small 10-gram wallet that is hard to steal but simple to use at almost any point of the globe has already become a usual practice for most of Earth’s population.
Visa’s second place in the list of card payment organizations (the leadership position is held by Chinese UnionPay) allows it to hold about 50% of the rest of the world. Not surprisingly, adding such a payment option to the online gambling platform is the unskippable step to attracting millions of potential customers.
Adding Visa payments to an online gambling platform
Legislative preconditions
According to the open sources, Visa is accepted in 244 countries and is supported by 341 providers. However, this statistic is actual for white businesses, while the gambling one isn’t totally accepted by all the states. Moreover, the legislation significantly varies from country to country, and even the online gambling laws across the European Union have multiple differences.
It means that the gambling business has, first of all, to be ready to deal with the basic legislative aspects in the particular state, and only then review payment methods. Nevertheless, the spread of Visa allows not to worry about the possible problems if adding the regarded payment method. At the same time, the existence of Visa is a reliable sign for the punter to play at the particular digital casino as the company has huge authority in the financial sphere.
Types of adding Visa as a payment method
Even though Visa is an internationally-known brand in financial services with a thoughtful technical implementation process, the digital platform can add this option in four different ways:
- Merchant account + Gateway
- Unified solutions
- Simplified payment processing
- Visa checkout
Every method has its advantages and drawbacks, so let’s review them in more detail.
Merchant account + Gateway. That is, probably, the most complicated way of adding Visa payments. Thus, the merchant has to create a financial account and organize a gateway process (protected requests and feedback to banks). This usually implies the high implementation costs as the solution requires two technical decisions, including the deal with Visa. Nonetheless, this way of adding cards gives the widest range of opportunities for the business-holder and the ability to control financial flows.
Unified solutions. Here any online casino or betting firm can rely on third-party services like PayPal, which can develop the solution for the platform. From the clients’ point of view, this method is simple enough because entering the credentials is made on PayPal’s servers and so processed safely. Such a solution is cheaper than the previous one and can be implemented faster. On the other hand, a merchant has less control over the financial process, and the issues like three-day delays in terms of withdrawals to the Visa card are outside the competence of the gaming platform and its support staff.
Simplified payment processing. Despite the fact that having PayPal in an online casino is already perceived by people as a simple and reliable payment solution, there are even simpler and more comfortable ones. Thus, Stripe suggests a similar service, but the customer doesn’t even need to leave the gambling platform’s website to provide the Visa payment. However, the price for such simplicity is even the worse support of the controversial or delaying cases. The gambling business has to remember that customer satisfaction is one of the hidden but important aspects that should be well organized.
Visa checkout. That is the solution organized directly by Visa and can be added as the digital platform’s payment method. The customer will see the appropriate button that will lead him or her through the payment procedure. For the business owner, this is a possibility to work directly with Visa and its programmers, who are ready to adjust and set the process. However, such a procedure is harder than the two previous ones, while the transaction fees are comparable and don’t give significant advantages.
What makes Visa a preferable payment option to choose by casinos?
Even though the process of adding Visa as the payment method is rather complicated and interesting for the business, all this makes sense only if it is offered for the client in a suitable manner. In other words, understanding how the final solution should look like and what advantages it will bring for the clients can be even more important.
In this regard, a gambling platform receives the following benefits when adds Visa as the payment option:
- Enormous clients’ database (as it was mentioned, Visa holds the biggest bank cards database if to exclude Chinese UnionPay, which means that the higher number of clients can deposit money to the platform);
- Spreading (Visa is legally present in 244 countries, which opens wide opportunities to enter a new market);
- Technical stability and reliability (being dozens of years on the financial services market, Visa always stands at the forefront of technical stability to save/enlarge clients base);
- Several implementation variants (there are four diverse variants of adding Visa to the gambling platform, described in more details in the previous section);
- Innovations’ affinity (Visa announced adding cryptocurrencies to the payment variants, which opened wide opportunities to deal with transactions; there is almost no need to buy additional casino software for payments if cooperating with an innovative partner).
Of course, some casinos, online lotteries, or betting platforms can have additional or more specific needs that Visa is able to cover, but the aforementioned ones are the basis.
Why do punters like using Visa when playing casino games?
Interestingly, but the list of benefits that Visa represents for customers is rather similar to those for business representatives. That is because Visa is a typical third-party service, which stays between the punter-platform relationship, so the cornerstone values are the same but viewed from different angles.
So, let’s restate the same benefits of Visa for punters but explain them from another perspective:
- Widespread and well-known brand (clients usually review the credibility of the casino or betting firm through the lens of available payment options, and Visa is definitely a good sign);
- Speed of payments (the process of depositing and withdrawing is vital for punters, and Visa processing pace is one of the best on the financial transactions’ market);
- Confidence in transactions (as Visa tightly cooperates with banks that give credit and debit cards, controversial cases can be resolved with minimum third parties involved in the process);
- Innovations’ affinity (it’s great to see the possibility to process payments in the needed currency, including a crypto one, isn’t it?).
Logically, a person who comes to the casino to play a favorite slot isn’t interested in the technical conditions that drive payments, so implementation variants aren’t interesting for gamers.
Visa drawbacks and conclusions
The inrush tempo of cryptocurrencies as the new way to provide payments proves that traditional services have drawbacks. At the moment, Visa is closer to traditional payment approaches than to the new ones, although the system is filled with technical innovations. Thus, Visa transactions can seem to have big fees, while the wide range of implementation methods is the sign of diverse protection levels. Interestingly, even adding cryptocurrencies to the list of available processing assets won’t totally eliminate those drawbacks as the system has determined commission levels that are hard to be decreased.
However, the issue of faster, cheaper, and safer transactions won’t disappear soon. Cryptocurrency transactions also imply fees and definite protection levels, even though the latter seems to be unassailable now. Nevertheless, Visa represents a modern financial services company that suggests suitable conditions for cooperation at the moment. Moreover, the cooperation conditions are quite flexible, so every business can choose the best variant.
Read more: Best Gambling Payment Providers
