Detailed about routing for gaming websites

Earlier, we have already discussed an importance of payment routing and cascading in our articles at Mono Talks. And today, we will delve deeper into one of these technologies. Routing is used by almost every merchant and certainly by every payment system. This setup ensures quality payment processing for online casinos and other businesses, avoiding overpaying on processing fees and increasing conversion rates. How exactly can this help?

We often talk about optimizing payment process, which includes not only connecting a range of payment systems but also correctly configuring and managing them. Routing is exactly the configuration that makes payment systems not chaotic but clearly functional for the benefit of your business.

Today, we will explore the difference between static and dynamic routing and which one is better to use. If you haven't read our previous article on the definition of routing, be sure to do so to stay informed.

Static routing

There are two main approaches to transaction routing: static and dynamic. Static routing involves predefined "ways" for payments based on clear rules and algorithms established before payment processing begins.

Based on the available set of payment methods and systems, you can build a scheme which your payments will follow. An example of the simplest static routing is geolocation set. Thus, you can precisely determine in advance that if a client's card is German and/or their account is registered in Germany, then payments should be processed using the payment system that accepts German cards. When a client visits payment page of your website, they will immediately see only necessary payment methods that can process their payment originated from Germany.

Similar settings can be applied to the amount of payment or type of card, such as Visa or Mastercard. For example, small transactions can be processed via a special gateway, while larger ones via another. This may be necessary to save on fees on processing large payments. Or, it may be to improve approval rates depending on the technical capabilities of payment gateways. Overall, the reason for using payment routing is precisely to optimize payments, save money, and increase process efficiency. Static routing is good because it is:

• Simple: Predefined rules are entered into the system and do not require verification. They are set for 100% execution, and you can be sure that all payments are directed to the right payment system exactly as you specified.
• Predictable: The behavior of your system created in this way is easy to predict, as it only does what you have instructed. This allows you to predict and plan fees for payments, exchange rate costs, and schedule the arrival and approval ratio of payments.
• However, static routing has several disadvantages that you should count too. Among them are:
• Lack of flexibility;
• Inability to optimize in real-time.

Since this is a predetermined path, it cannot be changed on the fly and cannot be done selectively for just one or a few transactions; any change will affect everything. This carries the risk of reacting slowly to market changes and not noticing failures in the payment system in real-time. The adaptability of your system is thus reduced, and if you do not manually monitor everything, you may miss something important for your processing.

Dynamic routing

When static routing is not enough to cover all the needs of iGaming merchants, dynamic routing may be necessary. Since there can be many payments and their nature is diverse, creating a more complex system becomes almost inevitable.

Dynamic routing involves choosing the best path for a transaction not in advance but in real-time and it operates 24/7 as payments do. Technologies based on artificial intelligence can already learn and immediately apply results. But even without using AI, you can create an actual dynamic system that, in real-time, takes into account the load on payment system, risk level of payment or payment method, cost of transactions, and priorities of payment systems assigned by the business.

Thanks to this, you can constantly keep up. For example, if you receive information about a high load on a certain PSP, redirect your payments to another gateway. Or, you can send a risky client to a payment gateway that is better suited for them and allows you to reduce those risks. Payment acceptance is a very dynamic process, as initial conditions can change several times a day, so using a more complex technology allows you to better react to these changes.

Which routing is better for a gaming site?

The answer to this question will depend on the volume of transactions and number of markets your product covers. If you accept relatively small flows of payments, then static routing may be sufficient for you. Implementing it in practice is not too expensive and relatively quick, which is often critically important for online businesses. You will need to consider a set of conditions that are important to you before starting to accept payments and describe them in clear system rules.

Thus, your payment structure will follow exclusively predefined algorithms and fully meet the requirements of your business. You can add or remove previously entered rules, which will give some flexibility to static routing.

However, if this flexibility is not enough and you have more than a thousand payments per day, then you should consider building a dynamic routing system. Losses in this case can account too much if the static system does not react to a newly appeared factor. At the same time, truly dynamic system often implies a combination of both methods. You can use both static settings and dynamic rules simultaneously.

For example, returning to payment methods divided by markets, it is not necessary to use a dynamic system here, as adding a market to the set of payment systems does not happen every minute. And you will definitely know about it. Therefore, you can set a range of available countries for payment system once and change it after some time if you need. Otherwise, no need to change.

However, the situation with system load is different. Each payment system simultaneously serves dozens of businesses besides yours and can have periods of peak load or downtime for maintenance. Upon receiving such a notification, your dynamic system can react instantly and "bypass" such a PSP, giving preference to those that are working properly at the moment. By combining these rules, you can achieve minimal efficiency losses and almost constant stable operation.

If you have any questions or need help setting up routing for your website, you can discuss this with us during a consultation. Monoup provides payment optimization services, and within the framework of increasing payment conversion, we also improve the routing system. Text us to learn more about this service.