A game top-up website is a website where players buy a game's virtual currency with local ways to pay, such as UPI, wallets and prepaid cards, and the currency appears in the game within seconds. Top-up means adding credit, as with a prepaid mobile recharge. These websites matter most in countries where few players have a credit card, such as India and much of Southeast Asia.
Many games sell their own virtual currency, such as diamonds, gems or tokens, which players spend on characters and items. Inside the game, a purchase usually goes through the phone's app store. The app store needs a card or a stored balance, and it keeps a commission of 15% to 30% of each purchase. A top-up website offers another way to pay.
Take, for example, a student in Ranchi who plays a battle game on his phone. He wants a new outfit for his character, which costs 500 diamonds. He opens a top-up website in his phone's browser. He selects the game and types his player ID, the number that identifies his account in the game. He chooses a pack of 520 diamonds for ₹399 and pays with UPI. Within seconds, the diamonds appear in his game account. He never typed a card number.
Behind the website, several systems take part. A payment gateway receives the UPI payment and confirms it. In other countries, the website connects to that country's alternative payment methods, such as prepaid cards bought at a corner shop, or a charge added to the phone bill. Many players also pay from a digital wallet. Once the payment is confirmed, the website sends a request to the game publisher's API, a set of instructions through which one program asks another to do something. The request asks the game to credit 520 diamonds to that player ID.
The website is usually the legal seller of the currency. This makes it the merchant of record (MoR): it collects the payment, handles refunds and pays the taxes on the sale. It keeps a share of each purchase and pays the rest to the publisher. For the publisher, that share is often smaller than the app store's commission. The website also reaches players who could not pay inside the game at all.
Top-ups for free-to-play mobile games are the main business. Engineers in Bengaluru build one of the largest top-up stores, which players across Asia and beyond use.