According to Tencent’s Q2 2023 financial report data, among the global version of “honor of kings” players who topped up in US dollars through official channels, only 12% could benefit directly from discounts, while the third-party honor of kings top up platform could offer discounts of up to 35% through exchange rate arbitrage and mass purchase. Take the official price in the US region as an example. The price for 6,480 points is $99.99. However, through the “Summer Promotion” on the official site Codashop, with the application of the “15% back on First recharge” promotion, you can really buy 7,452 points (with a bonus of 972 points) at $84.99, the unit price declining to $0.0114 per point. Save 15% on the official price. Moreover, some platforms have allied with Visa and Mastercard to provide an “8 dollars off for 50 dollars spent” discount offer, which can reduce players’ real costs by another 16%.
Price disparities at the regional level widen the discount space further. For instance, in the Turkish region, due to the instability of the lira (TRY) currency exchange rate, during August 2023, a specific third-party platform had demanded 6,480 points at 720 TRY (approximately 26 US dollars). After adding the “US dollar payment exclusive offer” of the platform, US players need to pay only 23.4 US dollars through PayPal (saving 10% in optimizing exchange rates). The real unit price is $0.0036 per point, and that is 64% cheaper than the official price in the US region. According to Sensor Tower statistics, in 2023, total savings of players in emerging markets via such cross-regional proxy recharges accounted for more than 120 million US dollars, or 29% of “Honor of Kings'” worldwide third-party recharge revenue.
Technically, compliant platforms enhance efficiency and security by linking directly with Tencent’s payment interface. For instance, since MyCard improved its API system in 2022, it has reduced the average time to arrival of US dollar recharges from 3 minutes to 40 seconds, decreased the error rate from 1.2% to 0.05%, and is now capable of supporting real-time synchronization with Tencent’s limited-time activities (e.g., “Double Recharge Week”). When the players recharge $100 during the event time, they will be able to receive additional 2,000 points, increasing the rate of return by 20% in total. Due to the retro technology of the black industry channels, 37% of the fictitious orders were detected by Tencent’s risk control system in 2022, and 28,000 accounts were shut down permanently.
In terms of risk vs cost equilibrium, in 2021 the Philippines was the victim of a “discount trap” incident. Illegal websites enticed players with a “50% off substitute recharge” ploy but effectively recharged using credit card scams, which caused a 41% spike in the account suspension rate of players. The compliant platform, with HTTPS encrypted transmission and PCI DSS authentication, contains the risk of leakage of payment information at less than 0.02%. For instance, a particular platform adopts a prepaid card model, reducing the expense of bulk purchase by 18% and offering players a discount of 10%. For a 100 US dollar refill, 11,800 points can be earned (10,000 points from the official way), and simultaneously obtain a 99.5% success rate of receiving funds.
In payment means maximizing strategy, players can stack discounts to maximize the discount. For example, American players. By linking a Citibank credit card for refilling with Apple Pay, they can stack “5% cash back on game consumption” + the platform’s “Full amount gift” offer. Ultimately, they can earn 6,480 points for only $89.99, which is $10 less than if they had used the official channel by itself. According to the statistics of the “Electronic Payment Market Report”, the rate of exchange rate conversion error for cross-border game recharge services of 2023 has dropped to 0.8% from the industry’s average of 3.5%. Certain platforms have also knocked off the cost of actual payments for users by 4% to 7% through AI dynamic adjustments in exchange rate quotations.
In summary, recharging in US dollars through the compliant honor of kings top up platform can benefit from several discounts including regional pricing variation (saving 64%), activity rebates (increasing the rate of return by 20%), and superimposed benefits on payment channels (reducing by another 16%). But it must choose an approved Tencent-approved service provider certified with ISO 27001 to lower the risk of suspension of account to less than 0.1%, and fix the best exchange rate (error rate ≤0.5%) through the real-time comparison tool to gain dual guarantees of security and cost performance.