SWAG, Increased Revenue with the Right Payment Gateway

SWAG acquired new users with XanPay processing up to 90% of the transaction volume in SEA

Strong Growth of the Online Adult Entertainment Space

Online pornography experienced exponential growth during the pandemic. Pornhub reported a worldwide traffic increase of 11.6% during COVID-19. With the closure of the sex industry, the increasing number of people working from home and restrictive social distancing measures has made these online avenues extremely popular.

In this blog, we will talk about how SWAG gained the upper hand against its competitors during this period by adopting a reliable payment gateway.

Challenges of the Adult & 18+ Industry

SWAG is Asia's largest online adult interactive brand. The Taiwan-based company started in 2017 with a team of 80 employees. They have come a long way to establish themselves as the leader in the region.

For those who are unfamiliar, there are major challenges and taboos that the online adult entertainment space constantly faced for decades.

• Many financial institutions (FIs) consider merchants in this industry as ‘high-risk’

• ‘High-risk’ merchants faced extreme scrutiny and long approval lead times

• Payment gateways that are accepting of these merchants usually charged exorbitant fees, sometimes nearly 20%

• Unnecessary and tedious paperwork and processes

• Perceived as risky business due to the high possibility of high chargeback

It wasn’t any different for SWAG, and they encountered many such obstacles over the years, but they continued to look for solutions that support the adult content creator industry. Research shows that local payment methods or alternate payment methods (APMs) are 3x more popular than credit cards across APAC.

So, they began to look for local payment gateways which provided Alternate Payment Methods (APMs) across Asia. But issues like poor API integration documentation and having payment gateways that disappeared without response - made it difficult for them to break into new markets.

Reliable Payment Gateway in the APAC Region

When OnlyFans announced an official ban, the SWAG team onboarded many of the adult content creators. They were determined to provide a reputable source of entertainment as well as income to their content creators.

After getting to know about XanPay, SWAG integrated and went live with new payment options within a week. Immediately, they observed payment adoption from across 8 new countries. Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong became their biggest markets in this region. Additionally, the number of payment issues reported by users had also drastically reduced.

XanPay is our one-stop payment gateway in Asia. They solved our pain points. Not only are we able to reach new users and markets, but our alternative payments in Southeast Asia are also now managed by them, which is amazing - Allan Lei, CTO of SWAG

Since then, XanPay accounts for up to 90% of their payment transactions in the new markets that they expanded to.

Key Highlights

• Generated revenue from 8 new Asian countries within a month of integration

• About 50% of the transactions are from XanPay vs non-XanPay

• Grew their revenue and transaction volume by 5% within 3 months of integration

• No. of payment issues reported by users drastically reduced

• Ability to focus on bigger marketing and expansion plans

• Acquired new users with XanPay processing up to 90% of the transaction volume in SEA

Payments, Streamlined

XanPay has become their one-stop payment gateway solution using the full checkout page option. By getting the right payment gateway, the SWAG team gets to focus their efforts on bigger business plans.

SWAG now aims to deepen its reach into Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia.

For more information about XanPay’s services in the adult entertainment industry, please visit here. Visit the adult entertainment for more, SWAG.