101XP: blocking Qiwi would temporarily reduce the revenues of the Russian online gaming market for the period of audience adaptation

The week before last, the news about the introduction of Qiwi and Skrill payment services into the register of prohibited sites thundered. At the beginning of last week, the story ended safely after the services removed links to online gambling casinos and refused to accept payments for them (recall, online casinos are officially banned in Russia). Despite the good ending, we had a lot of questions about this precedent, which we decided to ask 101XP, a company engaged in operating client and browser-based MMO. The questions were answered by the company’s marketing specialist Alexander Voronov.

Hi! Let’s imagine for a moment that Roskomnadzor has made a final and irrevocable decision to tighten the screws and cut off oxygen to these services. How much would this affect the Russian gaming market? And would it have affected at all?

First I want to point out that this is very unlikely. The only complaints were about making payments for online casinos. There are no more claims against Qiwi and Skrill.

I asked this question due to the fact that due to a number of recent legislative initiatives, a little hysteria is present on the market. In this context, I want to know more about the situation.

Look, Skrill is not so well known to Russian companies, few people use it. By the way, we have a contract with Skrill, but this is rather an exception. For this reason, blocking it would have little impact on the industry. Perhaps there would have been noise, but in fact — it would have had little effect on anything.

I know that Skrill is often used for casinos, so it would probably be a problem for them.

Blocking Qiwi, of course, would cause a stir. Firstly, it is used by a large number of people. A lot of people spend their payments through it. So after its ban, the revenues of the online and browser-based MMO market at first would have decreased by no more than 20%. But only in the first days. Then people would start using alternative payment services.

I will add that the nuts with identification are not fully tightened in Qiwi, so those people who often transfer money, trying to avoid identification, would have great difficulties.

Moreover, I want to note that although Qiwi has a blocked page, because of which the service was included in the catalog of prohibited sites, but the service, as before, accepts bets on all kinds of gambling and online sweepstakes.

Plus, Roskomnadzor filed a complaint back in January, but was not going to block the page until the last. Recently, this topic surfaced again, and Qiwi was asked to remove these pages. And they immediately removed them. That is, the story is, in fact, sucked out of the finger. Nothing special happened.

That is, the hysteria was raised without a reason?

Yes. Now they want to require all electronic money to be linked to bank accounts for tracking. This is a more serious reason for discussion.

Why is this a more serious topic?

Most people who have e-wallets will find it difficult to link and verify them.

That is, if you have money on your account in a payment service, you will need to link them to a bank account without fail?

Yes. If you want to transfer money to someone via Qiwi, you will need to link this account to a bank account — for this you need to specify passport data, confirm them, send scans and so on.

If this initiative is approved, in order to make an IAP in your favorite browser game, will you need to send passport scans?

Not quite. In order to pay for anything at all, you will need to present your passport.

Every time?

Once. In order to pay for anything at all, you will need to provide passport data once. Situations can be different: it can be a mobile payment or sim card registration, it can be an electronic transfer, which would also require identity card data.

This turns out to be an extra barrier to making a purchase. How widespread are Internet payments today, how much more popular are they than credit cards? Or are they not more popular than five or six years ago?

Five or six years ago, credit cards and electronic money were already in the first place in transactions. If we talk about more ancient times, about ten years ago, then earlier in the games there were operators with whom you could meet directly: you transfer the money, they inform the administrator, and they add the amounts to the account. There were a lot of other ways — transfer via Sberbank, cash transfer and the like.

Today, the most popular way to transfer money is cards. I can’t talk about percentages, but they come first. On the second — transfer from payment services.

Can you name in shares which payment services are the most popular today?

I don’t have detailed information on market shares, but Qiwi is the leader. And — importantly — it still strongly depends on the project. Plus, you need to take into account that when any service is closed, no global catastrophe will happen, people will just go to pay in the game through another one. Qiwi will be closed, people will carry money through Yandex.

You said that the service’s share of revenue jumps from project to project. Shouldn’t this, first of all, depend on the popularity of the service?

Different projects have different target audiences, as well as services. One audience is accustomed to paying through one service, another through a new and fashionable alternative. It is difficult to give an example, but it is there.

Last question. Mail.Ru The Group recently published information according to which the online gaming market in Russia has been developing in ruble terms in recent years, and if you convert everything into dollars at weighted average rates… then he was somewhere at the level of 2012. According to your assessment, if you look in dollars, is the Russian online gaming market really at the level of 2012?

If we talk about our company, then we are doing well in this regard. Our profit is only growing. But this is due, among other things, to the growing number of projects and payments in them. As for the situation in the market as a whole, it seems to me that although people began to pay less, they remained interested in games. That is, perhaps they are not paying as well this year as last year, but better than in 2012 — that’s for sure.

Thanks for the interview!