Coda
International leader in digital content monetization doesn’t play games when it comes to payments.
Coda turns to Worldpay, now Global Payments, for improved authorization rate performance and other business-impacting benefits
Founded in 2011 in Indonesia and now headquartered in Singapore, Coda (formerly Coda Payments) is a global fintech company that helps more than 15,000 brands and digital content publishers and businesses – especially in gaming, apps, streaming, entertainment and the creator economy – accept payments and monetize content.
The company connects these brand and publisher partners to consumer audiences worldwide, and enables them to effectively generate revenue through the widest range of secure, localized payment methods.
These clients range from global AAA studios, like Activision and EA, to fast-growing, mobile-first publishers across Asia and beyond, where Coda’s solutions help them deepen customer engagement and drive growth globally.
Coda also recently acquired Recharge, Europe’s leading prepaid payments platform.
The company operates across 70 markets, supports more than 90% of the world's preferred payment methods and connects publishers to more than 200 million paying users worldwide. Coda also acts as “Merchant of Record” for their publisher partners – meaning the company takes on tax, compliance and regulatory responsibilities so that publishers can instead focus on building great games.
Business challenges, pain points and desired payments system attributes
According to Ivan Chang, senior director, payment partnerships, at Coda, “As our company continues to scale, particularly as we expand our web store and direct-to-consumer offerings, we needed a payments partner that could match our global ambitions.”
Ivan then details the following challenges facing Coda, and what they sought from their payments firm and platform.
“We were looking for several things that don't always necessarily come together from a single provider,” he observes.
“Specifically, the breadth of global acquiring coverage across the markets where our publishers operate – and the issuer relationships to support it – were very important to us. Next was authorization rate performance, particularly for cross-border and card-not-present transactions in gaming and digital goods.
“Third,” he continues, “was sophisticated fraud and risk tools to protect our platform and our publishers without creating unnecessary friction for legitimate players. We also needed a scalable platform that could grow with us as transaction volumes increased and as we expanded into new markets.
“And finally,” Ivan notes, “we were keen to forge a true partnership. Not just involving infrastructure, but with a team that understood our industry, would proactively engage with us and could also help us navigate a fast-changing regulatory and payments landscape.”
Enter Worldpay
In 2023, Coda started scaling their web store and direct-to-consumer (D2C) solutions globally, and needed a reliable, established acquirer who could support card acceptance across the company’s key markets – from Southeast Asia to Europe and the Americas.
“Worldpay's scale, global coverage and – frankly – their reputation for authorization rate optimization made them a compelling choice for us,” says Ivan. “For a business like ours, where we're processing high transaction volumes across complex, cross-border flows on behalf of some of the world's largest gaming publishers, having an acquiring partner with that depth of capability matters enormously.”
Benefits cited and support lauded
As Ivan eagerly suggests, his headline benefit of working with Worldpay revolves around improved authorization rate performance.
“In gaming, a declined card is almost always a lost sale,” he remarks. “Players who can't complete a purchase at the moment they're engaged rarely return. Worldpay's routing capabilities and their issuer relationships have meaningfully improved our acceptance rates across key markets, which translates directly to revenue for our publisher partners.
“In addition to the ongoing compliance and operational support we receive from Worldpay,” offers Ivan, “their team really understands the dynamics of digital goods and gaming, and provides us with relevant insights that we genuinely value. Furthermore, Worldpay's annual Global Payments Report has been very useful for our own market planning, and for conversations with publisher partners, by helping us all understand how consumer payment preferences are evolving across different markets.”
Solutions deployed
According to Ivan, Coda’s core use cases include transactions through their Coda Webstore, direct payments via Codapay on publishers' own sites and Coda’s consumer platforms, such as Recharge.com, Startselect.com and Codashop.com.
“Given the growth of out-of-app monetization and the expansion of D2C web stores across our publisher base, mobile processing and e-commerce are at the center of our Worldpay engagement,” he shares.
Because of the elevated fraud risk profile of digital goods transactions – a high-target category for card fraud and friendly fraud/chargebacks – Coda uses Worldpay’s end-to-end FraudSight solution that detects high-risk behavior before, during and after a transaction occurs.
Additionally, Coda has deployed Worldpay’s FX services, which enable acceptance of 40 transaction currencies globally, while the Pazien platform provides in-depth reporting and transaction analytics.
Smooth implementation experience
Ivan recalls his integration experience was an overall pretty smooth and positive one, especially given the level of complexity involved.
“We were connecting Worldpay into an existing payments infrastructure that already supports more than 400 payment methods across over 70 markets. The Worldpay technical team was both very proactive and responsive during the implementation process, which greatly mattered because our publisher partners don't tolerate downtime or delays – any disruption to payment flows is a direct hit to their revenue.”
Noted improvements
Since partnering with Worldpay, Ivan has observed a significant boost in Coda’s card authorization rates that he attributes to both suggestions the Worldpay team has advised his company to make, as well as the overall strong performance by Worldpay’s payments platform.
“The most direct improvement has been in the authorization rate performance across our web store transactions. In a business where we're processing high volumes of digital goods transactions across diverse geographies, even a few percentage points of improvement in acceptance rates compounds into truly meaningful revenue.”
Final thoughts
Ivan then offers his following closing observations.
“Worldpay's cross-border acquiring capability and proven ability to handle high-volume payment processing makes them an excellent fit for our needs. Our relationship with them has been a genuine partnership. The pace of change in this industry is extraordinary – new court rulings, new platform policies and new regulatory frameworks, to name just a few. Having a payments partner like Worldpay that actively engages with this complexity, rather than leaving us to manage it on our own, is something we highly value.”
At a glance
Objective
Select a payments partner with proven expertise in gaming and digital goods that offers a scalable platform, global acquiring coverage, strong fraud prevention capabilities and the ability to improve authorization rates.
Worldpay solutions
Impact
- Expanded global reach
- Reduced friction at checkout
- Proactive support
- Incisive consumer insights
- Improved acceptance rates across key markets
“Worldpay's scale, global coverage and – frankly – their reputation for authorization rate optimization made them a compelling choice for us.”Ivan Chang, Senior Director, Payment Partnerships, Coda
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