How NetEase Payment Found Its Niche: From Risky Game Trades to Targeted User Journeys

Part 1: Find Product Positioning

Game transaction characteristics include:

Virtual asset trading makes authenticity hard to evaluate, leading to money‑laundering, fraud, and account theft risks.

NetEase games are primarily PC titles with higher average order values, requiring large‑amount payment capability.

Mainstream social/e‑commerce payment platforms like WeChat Pay and Alipay are not ideal for these risks, so NetEase adopts the following measures:

WeChat Pay intercepts suspicious transactions before checkout, reducing conversion.

High‑risk merchants may have their WeChat Pay channel closed or bear fraud penalties; NetEase Payment no longer supports WeChat Pay for such merchants.

Virtual transactions incur higher fees (≈1%+) compared to physical goods (0.3%‑0.6%).

For large payments (over ¥100,000), WeChat Pay success rate is about 10%, necessitating specialized payment solutions.

Thus NetEase Payment’s positioning is a low‑cost, secure, and professionally compliant solution for online game item trading, offering lower fees, anti‑money‑laundering and anti‑fraud measures, and large‑payment capabilities.

NetEase Payment, a third‑party platform launched in February 2009, has evolved into a low‑cost, safe, and compliant payment product.

Part 2: Master the Game User Transaction Journey

The core of the customer journey (marketing interaction) involves segmentation, touchpoints, incentives, effective interaction points, AB testing, and conversion measurement.

1. Define Start and End (Segmentation & Conversion Metrics)

User tags describe primary attributes; they are pre‑designed and stable.

Based on core metrics, game transaction users are divided into three label groups:

2. Design Process (Touchpoints, Incentives, Effective Interaction Points)

Different incentives are designed for different user types: non‑paying users and WeChat‑only users receive large‑discount card‑binding or full‑reduction activities; swing users are encouraged with small, frequent, random discounts to build habit.

3. AB Test Results

Non‑paying users: no significant difference between test and control groups.

WeChat‑only users: NetEase Payment share higher in test group but overall uplift only ~2% (target 3%).

Swing users: NetEase Payment share higher, overall uplift ~7% (exceeds target), though effectiveness slightly declines after this group exceeds 84%.

Based on these results, adjustments are made:

Stop marketing to non‑paying users.

Improve activity effectiveness for WeChat‑only users.

Further segment the growing swing‑user group for finer‑grained marketing.

4. Redefine Start and End

Two new user groups are added on top of existing tags, recognizing that tags are long‑term descriptors while groups are temporary clusters sharing tags, behaviors, or attributes.

5. Iterate Continuously

With a secure, low‑cost payment product as a foundation, NetEase Payment’s share, which had been declining in 2020, began rising steadily in 2021 after cultivating user trust and transaction habits.

Annual activity results are summarized in the following chart:

Key takeaways:

Measure metric gaps to assess performance differences.

Use incentive uptake to evaluate the value of “temptation”.

AB testing reveals true user motivations and intent.

Before harvesting results through marketing, several generations of payment engineers refined the product; marketing is just one touchpoint, and retaining users requires solid product and service, which will be the next focus.