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The online gaming sector in India has undergone a massive wave of success in the past few years. While various factors have contributed to the rising popularity of online gaming apps and websites, one major factor appears to be another recently successful industry, digital payment apps and services. Both these industries have seemed to flourish at around the same time, and have had a positive impact on the growth of each other’s influence.
The gaming industry in India has been around for a while, but it was during the years 2020 and 2021 that it reached its maximum potential. Whether it was real money gaming apps like online poker or teen patti, mobile gaming apps like PUBG and Free Fire, or sports betting apps and websites such as Betway or Bet365, all kinds of gaming ventures saw massive growth in these two years, even though the country and the world were undergoing the losses incurred by the coronavirus pandemic and its resulting lockdowns.
In fact, the online gaming industry seems to be growing at an annual rate of 40% and is expected to be worth $2.2 billion dollars by 2022. And this growth is despite the legal hurdles that some forms of online gaming have had to face in India.
This also happened to be the time that the digital payments sector in India was experiencing a surge. With more and more people shifting to UPI and digital wallets like Paytm, the previously cash-based economy of India seems to have embraced this cashless change. The value of UPI transactions just crossed $100 billion for the first time, in the month of October 2021. This whopping success of UPI can be attributed to the change in attitude that users have exhibited towards online payment services.
How have online payments helped the growth of the online gaming sector?
The answer lies with the close dependency that online gaming websites and apps have on digital payment options. The online gaming industry today is dominated by apps and websites that require the user to pay for a better experience, or even win money by playing for real money. This requires the user to often transfer money to and from the gaming app, which can be done quite easily with the integration of digital payment apps such as Google Pay or PhonePe.
This ecosystem of “give and take” that has been formed between gaming apps and digital payment services has made it possible for people to be more open to trying both services. People who have been regularly using digital payments may be now open to gaming online since it has become super convenient and fun. On the other hand, people who have been gaming online for a while may now use the online payment app for purposes other than gaming, because they have now become used to the online payment service.
Thus, it is not only the gaming industry that has benefited from the popularity of online payments but also the other way around.
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