Chargebacks are one of the most damaging and least discussed cost lines in an iGaming operator’s P&L. The headline figure is the lost deposit amount. The real cost includes the chargeback fee charged by your processor, the operational time spent disputing each case, and the cumulative risk to your payment relationships when rates climb above acceptable thresholds.
One European iGaming operator came to Lava Global with a chargeback rate that their payment processor had formally flagged as a risk concern. Within six months of switching their primary deposit method to Aryze’s Pay by Bank solution — built on Mastercard Open Banking rails — their chargeback rate had fallen by 94%.
This is how that happened, and what it means for operators still running percentage-based card payment infrastructure.
The Problem: Card Payments and the Chargeback Cycle
Card payments carry an inherent structural weakness for iGaming operators: they are reversible. A player can initiate a chargeback through their card provider, claim the transaction was unauthorised, and recover their deposit — sometimes even after having wagered the full amount. The burden of proof sits with the operator. The dispute process takes time, costs money, and rarely resolves in the operator’s favour even when the transaction was entirely legitimate.
For this operator, chargeback volume had two compounding effects:
First, the direct financial loss on each reversed transaction: the deposit amount returned, a chargeback fee paid to the processor, and the net revenue on that player eliminated entirely.
Second, the processor relationship risk. Payment processors monitor chargeback rates and apply thresholds. When an operator’s rate exceeds those thresholds, the response ranges from fee increases to account suspension. In an industry where payment continuity is critical to operations, this is existential exposure.
The operator was also paying 2.1% per transaction in card processing fees — a cost that scaled directly with deposit volume and was unpredictable month-to-month as their player base grew.
The Solution: Pay by Bank via Aryze
Lava Global introduced the operator to Aryze — a payment infrastructure provider operating on Mastercard Open Banking rails — and facilitated the commercial and technical integration of Pay by Bank as the primary deposit method.
The fundamental difference between A2A (account-to-account) payments and card payments is reversibility. When a player deposits via Pay by Bank, the transfer is authenticated directly at their bank, processed as an account-to-account transfer, and is irrevocable. There is no card network in the middle. There is no chargeback mechanism.
The commercial terms were equally significant: Aryze’s flat fee of €0.50 per transaction replaced the operator’s variable 2.1% card processing rate. On an average deposit of €75, the per-transaction fee moved from €1.58 to €0.50 — a 68% reduction in processing cost at that deposit level. At volume, across tens of thousands of monthly transactions, the impact on the operator’s payment cost base was material.
What Changed After Integration
The integration was completed in four weeks, covering the payment gateway connection, callback configuration, and player-facing checkout redesign. Aryze’s KYB (Know Your Business) process ran in parallel with the technical setup, meaning the operator was live without significant delay.
The results over the six months following go-live:
Chargeback rate: fell from the processor-flagged level to below 0.1% — a 94% reduction. The mechanism is direct: A2A payments cannot be charged back through the card dispute process, so the entire category of card-based chargeback fraud was structurally eliminated from the deposit flow.
Processing costs: decreased significantly. The switch from a 2.1% variable rate to a €0.50 flat fee reduced payment cost per transaction by over 60% at the operator’s average deposit level. As deposit volumes increased, the cost advantage of the flat-fee model grew proportionally.
Processor relationship: moved from risk-flagged to stable. With chargeback rates below threshold, the operator’s commercial relationship with their card processor — still in use for markets where A2A payment adoption was lower — normalised within three months.
Checkout conversion: held. There was no statistically significant drop-off in player conversion following the introduction of Pay by Bank as the primary deposit method. The bank-authenticated flow — select your bank, authenticate via your banking app, transfer confirmed — proved intuitive for players in the target markets.
What This Means for Other Operators
This case is not unusual in its inputs. Chargeback exposure is a structural feature of card-based iGaming payment infrastructure. The 2–2.5% processing fee range is standard for most card acquirers serving iGaming. The risk to processor relationships when rates exceed threshold is well-documented across the industry.
What is notable is the scale of improvement available through a single infrastructure change. Switching the primary deposit method from card to A2A does not just reduce chargebacks — it makes most card-related chargebacks structurally impossible. That is a different category of improvement from tightening fraud controls or implementing 3DS2 authentication on existing card transactions.
The flat-fee model adds a layer of margin predictability that percentage-based processing never provides. An operator processing 100,000 transactions per month at an average deposit of €80 is paying €160,000 in card fees at 2% — or €50,000 with Aryze’s flat fee. At 200,000 monthly transactions, the card fee doubles; the Aryze fee doubles too, but the absolute saving scales proportionally.
Is Pay by Bank Right for Your Operation?
Pay by Bank via Aryze is most effective for operators processing meaningful deposit volume in markets with strong Open Banking adoption — principally the UK, Nordics, and major European markets. The solution operates on Mastercard Open Banking rails under UK licence, and is suited to operators who hold or are seeking a regulated presence in those markets.
The minimum viable volume to justify the integration is lower than most operators assume. If you are currently paying more than 1.5% in card processing fees and have a measurable chargeback rate, the economics will typically work in your favour before you reach 50,000 monthly transactions.
Lava Global manages the full commercial and technical integration process — from initial assessment through to go-live — as part of our Open Banking A2A Payments offering, powered by Aryze.
Book a consultation with the Lava Global team →
We can model the savings against your current transaction volume and fee structure in a single 30-minute conversation. Visit lavaglobal.net or email stef@lavaglobal.net.
