Live Gamer, the company that pioneered real-money-trading for online games, completed its acquisition of N-Cash, Korea’s premier micro-transaction provider. N-Cash are a monster success story in Asia, completing more than 150 million micro-transactions and currently handling 56 million registered users.What does this mean?
Live Gamer can now add N-Cash’s publisher-to-player micro-transaction platform, expand its offering into a larger e-commerce solution with multiple integration options for game operators.
Publishers can refer to one partner – instead of many – to roll out secure micro-transaction-based marketplaces, drive ARPU (average revenue per user), improve conversion rates, and enable sanctioned player-to-player trading.
“The success of the virtual goods and micro-transaction market in Asia clearly shows this is the wave of the future,” said David Cole, lead analyst at research firm DFC Intelligence. “The virtual goods model both increases product usage and is highly profitable for publishers.”
One of the most important growth areas research firms have identified is for companies to expand the Asian business model on a global basis.
Live Gamer now has a Total Gaming eCommerce Solution
With this Cash acquisition, Live Gamer can now add publisher-to-player transaction capabilities to its existing player-to-player offering.
These primary and secondary market engines can piggy back on its e-commerce platform featuring virtual item SKU management; e-wallet and billing; global payment gateway integration; anti-fraud; and analytics and reporting.
This technology stack gives it one of the first total commerce solutions for online games, virtual worlds, social networks, and other virtual environments.
Live Gamer intends to capitalize on this by working very closely with publishers to drive ARPU and improve conversion rates.
A little background on N-Cash
Micro-transaction-based games began in South Korea almost 10 years back.
N-Cash’s platform was the first item-based game there (Joyon’s GerSang) and since 2001, has continued to develop games from over 60 game operators worldwide. N-Cash, backed by Samsung Venture Investment Corp., has integrated in more than 100 titles, aggregated over 200 payment service providers and become the leader in online game micro-transaction billing.
About Live Gamer
Based in New York, Live Gamer is backed by $24 million in venture funding from Charles River Ventures, Kodiak Venture Partners, and FirstMark Capital.
Live Gamer combines e-commerce with virtual economy expertise to help online game publishers, virtual world operators, and operators of other virtual environments, such as social networks, create new transaction-based revenue streams.
Under the terms of the deal, N-Cash’s Seo will continue as President of N-Cash. In this role, Seo will work closely with former Microsoft Korea vet Joon Seog Park, who moves into the role of CEO of N-Cash to further expand the company’s presence in the region.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
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