iGaming Payment Solutions

Types of Payment Providers

The iGaming payment space has four types of providers, and they do different things.

Payment Service Providers (PSPs) handle the full transaction — from the player's card or wallet to the operator's bank account. Paysafe, Nuvei, and Worldpay are PSPs. They own the relationship with acquiring banks and card networks, which means they take on the risk and charge accordingly.

Payment Gateways sit between the operator's platform and one or more processors. They route transactions but don't process them directly. Think of a gateway as a switchboard — it sends each transaction to the best available processor based on region, payment method, or success rate. Checkout.com operates partly as a gateway.

Payment Orchestrators go a step further than gateways. Platforms like Corefy and Praxis connect to hundreds of PSPs, gateways, and processors through a single API. The operator integrates once and gets access to multiple providers, with smart routing that automatically picks the best path for each transaction. Orchestration matters when you're operating in 10+ markets with different payment preferences in each.

Payment Processors handle the actual movement of money between banks. They're the backend infrastructure. Most operators don't work with processors directly — they access processing through a PSP or gateway. North and Shift4 are examples of companies that offer direct processing for iGaming.

The lines between these categories blur. Nuvei is a PSP that also does orchestration. Corefy orchestrates but also processes. When you're evaluating providers, focus less on what they call themselves and more on what they actually do for your specific setup.

Common Payment Challenges in iGaming

Payments in iGaming are harder than payments in regular e-commerce. Three reasons.

First, chargebacks. iGaming has some of the highest chargeback rates of any industry. Players dispute deposits after losing. Card networks monitor chargeback ratios closely, and if an operator crosses the threshold (typically 1% of transactions), they risk losing their merchant account entirely. Every provider handles chargebacks differently — some offer prevention tools, some offer insurance, some just pass the cost to you.

Second, getting a merchant account in the first place. Most acquiring banks consider online gambling high-risk. That limits which processors will work with you, and the ones that will charge higher fees and impose rolling reserves (holding 5-10% of your processing volume for 6+ months as security). This is why iGaming-specific providers exist — they've built relationships with acquiring banks that understand the industry.

Third, compliance keeps changing. The EU's Sixth Anti-Money Laundering Directive added new requirements for transaction monitoring. The UK's Gambling Commission updated its rules on affordability checks, which directly affect payment flows. Brazil just launched its regulatory framework. Every market has its own rules, and your payment provider needs to keep up — or you're the one paying fines.

Beyond these three, there are practical problems: multi-currency conversion costs eating into margins, slow settlement times tying up working capital, and player verification requirements that add friction to the deposit flow and kill conversion rates.

Choosing the Right Payment Solution

There's no single best provider. The right choice depends on where you operate, what your players expect, and how much volume you're processing.

Start with geography. If you're launching in Brazil, you need a provider with native Pix support — not one that routes Pix through a third-party aggregator. If you're in the Nordics, open banking through Trustly or Zimpler will convert better than card payments. If you're US-only, your provider list is short because few processors serve regulated US gambling.

Then look at your player base. Recreational casino players in Europe expect Visa and Mastercard. High-volume sports bettors in Asia use local bank transfers. Crypto-native players want Bitcoin deposits with instant confirmation. The payment methods your provider supports determine whether players actually complete their first deposit.

Volume matters for pricing. A startup processing €100K per month pays different rates than an operator doing €10M. Most PSPs have tiered pricing that drops as volume increases. Some charge flat percentage fees, others add per-transaction costs. Get quotes from at least three providers before committing.

Finally, think about what happens when things go wrong. Your provider's chargeback handling, fraud prevention, and customer support matter more than their marketing page. Ask for chargeback rates across their iGaming portfolio. Ask how fast their support responds to MID-related emergencies. Ask what happens to your funds if they decide to terminate your account.

We built this directory so operators can compare these factors without calling 30 sales teams. Use the filters, check the profiles, and make a shortlist based on data, not pitch decks.