Future of Payments in Gaming - Faisal Al Bitar, Product Principal, Tamatem

foreign [Music] [Applause] pretty much dead on schedule is the future of payments in gaming and this is with Faisal albatar from tamatam Miss Faisal Withers fantastic give it a professor right thank you for that good afternoon everyone my name is Faisal of guitar and I'm the product principal at them Autumn games and today I'll be talking about the future of

payments in the mobile gaming space Also touching upon how alternative payments is really transforming the Mina region and then finally how can game developers and Publishers really leverage this opportunity so did you know that more than 70 percent of the Mena region today is underbanked or unbanked meaning a large portion of the population today does not have access to basic Financial products and the reason is they're either financially excluded lack of financial literacy and lack of trust to basic financial institutions countries like Egypt with a hundred million population only 30 percent are backed countries like Iraq have less than three percent credit card penetration so the reality is there's a 70 percent loss opportunity where users in Mina do

not have access and the ability to conduct Pro transactions in the digital economy traditional distribution channels like Apple and Google offer very limited payment options only credit cards and debit cards yet when we look at Mina as a whole Mina is one of the fastest growing gaming Market valued around 5 billion dollars today there are more than 400 million Arabic speakers 70 smartphone smartphone penetration and in Saudi Arabia alone there are around 61 percent of the population are actually gamers that means that there are more than 21 million mobile Gamers and in Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia alone 270 dollars is the average revenue per

paying users that is eight times the average paying paying user in China yet with all that there's still an untapped opportunity and it's massive and the reality is how can we unlock this region we're starting to see that this is starting to shape up and one part of it was really post covet post covet digital payment method adoption in the region increased from nine to 70 percent and this was led to several reasons one was changing consumer preference consumers now are demanding for alternative methods that are much cheaper more accessible and much easier to use and that demand has been met by a huge supply of fintechs financial technology companies that are offering Financial products fully digital more conveniently and much cheaper today you can use a payment method

right from your smartphone you don't need to go to a bank account you don't need to go through a process of signing a million papers and it's for free and then finally governments have realized the importance of these initiatives and have been pushing for financial inclusion when we look at me the fintech in Mina it's also one of the fastest growing markets globally today there are more than 500 fintech startups in Mina and the majority are in the payment space there are a lot of companies today in Mina offering alternative payment methods like credit cards yet with zero interest fees or a payment method that you can open directly from your phone and it's embedded in your checkout experience and a catalyst that has been increasing this adoption has been mobile wallets and the reality is today in Mina smartphone penetration outpaces bank accounts companies like stcpay which is

a normal wallet based out of Saudi Arabia has 6 million users other companies like fauri offers a cash Outlet opportunity for people to pay with cash and purchase digitally they have a bigger Outlet Network than Branch networks in Egypt and others like Vodafone cash today wallets is becoming the preferred payment method for a lot of these users going back to Egypt today Egypt has more than 20 million mobile wallets and that will increase to around 58 million that is more than 60 percent of the population of Egypt and that's why the solution today to really penetrate the region is of two of things it's access to distribution networks and alternative payment methods because the reality is these alternative payment methods are becoming the primary accounts for these consumers

and as a game developer and as a game publisher depending only on card payments will no longer cut it and that's why I'd like to share with you an opportunity of how you can leverage the region through tomatan Plus so tomato Plus is a One-Stop shop platform that offers you distribution monetization and support you can start enlisting your gaming items on our Marketplace and we'll support you in acquiring users but also expanding your reach in the region will offer your users the ability to conduct transactions using local preferred payment methods payment methods that they use on their daily day and what's what's what's what's what's so attractive of this is that the payment methods that we're offering are also suitable for microtransactions whereas a merchant you're no longer paying a 35 transaction fee that you pay

for app PayPal and other Solutions and then finally we offer you full support on the platform you don't have to worry about customer disputes payments all you need to worry about is creating games and that's what you're good at we understand how important monetization is and we've been working on resolving these challenges the reality is offering a large payment network is a lot of hassle it requires it's a time consuming process it requires multiple apis and different Integrations and there's a huge headache in terms of meeting compliant requirements and having legal presence in every entity and that's why we're here to solve that for you by just listing on our platform you get access to more than 25 payment methods across eight countries with a diverse network of mobile wallets direct

career billing and cash Outlets and it's only one single Technical and Commercial connection the solution is pretty simple we offer you a marketplace where you can start enlisting your in-game items you can customize your in-game items and packages with no limitations targeting your whale customers and other users you can offer unique promotions and bundles in order to incentivize and acquiring new users but also increasing retention and then finally with a simple SDK integration any user that conducts a payment on our platform is automatically redeemed into the account higher margins plus greater access equals more Revenue so what are the benefits for a game developer partnering up with tamatan Plus first is reach we help you in acquiring

new users in the Mina region but more importantly as well as expanding to a segment that is yet to be untapped two throughout the platform you can create different packages that could increase loyalty and convergence of your users but also increasing the average transactions and with every transaction you make you save on the margins our margins are much more competitive than traditional distribution platforms and then finally it's quite simple one integration gives you access to a large network of payments as well a full experience for your users to offer them the ability to transact and automatically top up their game accounts and our business model is very simple zero integration fees zero upfront costs and less than 15 in terms of every transaction you make

Aston Martin we know this Market very well we've been in the market for over nine plus years we are a game developer and publisher we've developed and published over 50 plus games more than 150 million downloads and our games have reached 50 more than 50 uh number one charts we know this Market very well and we're here to support you we're also backed by Regional and Global Investors like Crafton MSA and other local investors who know the region very well so unlock the world's fastest growing Mobile's Market with just one click you can scan our QR code join our Network and we're happy to work with you thank you [Applause] that's great do you have any questions in the room I have I have a question why is it that you think that the banks have been so slow why is it was it that they've left this this yawning Gap that so many

companies are able to fill with digital payments yeah so there's a number of reasons one of the reasons is Banks do not know how to serve a segment of users that have do not have um or have not yet had any type of data previously in terms of taking any loans or products the the second aspect is that serving those type of customers is quite expensive because Banks and previously have relied on having actual infrastructure in terms of serving them and the reality is that a lot of these customers have now been been able to move digitally with just their smartphones so banks have not realized that but I think the sleeping giant is now has awakened and they're definitely moving in that space But it takes a lot more than just figuring out but designing the whole experience and making it very simple and easy to use any more for any more let me get a mic to you firstly thank you it was very interesting my name is Thomas I'm a game

Economist manager at playtica and actually it was very interesting and I just wanted to know what is the market of many many users like what kind of games do they play a specific category or something if you have a view about it or the inside sure so we see there are a couple of genres that are quite attractive in the market uh card games is something that we've seen quite a tremendous growth strategy role playing a lot of mina users prefer to play social games so any type of game that has a social interaction we generally see that there's a much higher adoption rate there okay and second the question we use in our games a lot of segmentation for pricing so do you guys also support it definitely so throughout the platform you can build different packages for different users and I think the beauty

there is that there is no longer a limitation so if you want to offer packages that are above 100 you can also use that through the platform amazing thanks a lot welcome for more back here thanks hi I'm Alex uh I was wondering is it allowed to have for example skill games for cash is the well let's say the legal framework it does would allow that for example uh think about games like uh bingo cash where you can play against somebody else but for actual money so topping up with money first of all is this legal and also would you be able to support something like that so it really depends uh on the jurisdictrictions there are certain General restrictions where with restricted that directly there are other areas where I would say it's still in a gray area but happy to discuss this offline and look at how we can support you there and testing well good give it up for

Faisal that was great thank you for that [Applause] [Music] [Applause]