Neovia makes four-deal splash into MMOG space
Neovia, one of the biggest providers of payment products to online gambling sector, has signed four new deals in the massive multi-player online game (MMOG) space that Bwin and 888 B2B arm Dragonfish entered last year and the Bwin co-CEO Manfred Bodner has hailed as offering the future on online gambling...
NEOVIA, one of the biggest providers of payment products to online gambling sector, has signed four new deals in the massive multi-player online game (MMOG) space that Bwin and Dragonfish entered last year.
Neovia is used by more than 1,500 egaming sites, with new clients this fortnight alone including BSkyB’s Sky Betting and Gaming sites and Sega Games.
In September 2009, Neovia signed a landmark deal with PayPal to offer the PayPal payment method to customers of sites using Neovia’s Netbanx payments gateway – the same month that Bwin acquired a majority shareholding in UnitedGames, the MMOG publisher and developer, with Bwin co-chief executive Manfred Bodner hailing MMOG as the future of online gambling.
Neovia’s new MMOG deals include a tie to provide its Neteller and Neteller 1-Pay payment options to all customers of German MMOG game developer Travian Games, whose browser-based platform has been translated into 42 languages and has more than five million players worldwide.
The payment giant has also signed a new tie with Austria’s Crafty Studios, a game developer whose titles include Devil Fight II and which operates Buildo, a ‘second life’ money conversion portal in which players can convert real money into ‘Linden Dollars’ “ the virtual currency offered by Linden Labs, with which Dragonfish, 888’s B2B arm, signed a payment service deal in November last year.
Neovia also boasts new ties to offer its Neteller e-way to Hong Kong’s OffGamers, which offers support for some 300,000 worldwide players for games including World of Warcraft, Aion Online, The Rune of Landscape and Warhammer; and to Singapore’s Cherry Credits, which provides a payment solution to over 125 online games and game publishers including NHN, Ntreev, Softnyx, Sulake and CJ Internet.
Neovia executive vice president Dan Starr said: “Travian are pioneers in the MMOG market, as well as our other three merchants announced today. We’ve paved the way into unexplored territories for our customers, and helped them monetise their games better and provide their customers with the benefit of quick and simple payment solutions.”
Neovia appointed Mark Mayhew as chief executive in August last year, replacing Ron Martin, who stepped down in March.
In other payment processing news this week, PokerStars made clear that it does not re-code ‘7995’ online gambling transactions after US credit card giants Mastercard and Visa last week began rejecting payments from US customers on a number of egaming sites including PokerStars.
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