Web Shop Platforms for Mobile Games: How to Choose a Provider
Web shop providers handle payments, tax, fraud and storefronts so studios can sell directly. They differ in merchant-of-record coverage, store building tools, LiveOps features and pricing.
Disclosure: I spent 15 years at Games2win, a mobile games publisher. No company named here paid for inclusion or sponsored this article. I also advise publishers and ad-tech companies, so a company named here may be, or may become, a client or contact.
What does a web shop provider do?
It lets a studio sell in-game currency and items directly on the web. Most act as merchant of record — taking on payment processing, sales tax and VAT, fraud screening, chargebacks and compliance — and provide a hosted or embeddable storefront, player login linked to the game account, and delivery of purchased items into the game.
Which providers do mobile game studios use?
Commonly cited options include:
- Xsolla — a long-established games commerce company with broad payment-method coverage, merchant-of-record services and a wide set of monetization tools.
- Appcharge — a mobile-game-focused web store platform emphasising no-code store building and game-like store experiences.
- Stash — a developer-first web shop platform for direct-to-consumer game commerce.
- Aghanim — a web shop and LiveOps platform for mobile games with no-code store building and automation tools.
- Coda — a Singapore-headquartered payments company serving game publishers, with strong coverage of local payment methods in Asia and other markets.
Other payment and commerce providers, and in-house builds on general payment processors, are also used. The field is moving quickly; verify current capabilities directly.
How do you choose?
- Markets and payment methods. Coverage of local methods where your payers are.
- Merchant of record and tax. Who carries liability in each country.
- Store building. No-code tools versus API-first; how fast your LiveOps team can ship offers.
- Personalisation and LiveOps. Segmented offers, bundles, loyalty, promotions — and whether they mirror in-game offers.
- Identity and delivery. Account linking, item delivery reliability, refund handling.
- Data. Event-level purchase data to your warehouse, joinable to install source and player behaviour.
- Fees at your volume, including payment costs by method.
What matters more than the provider?
Traffic and measurement. A web shop monetizes existing intent, so you need legitimate ways to route players to it — and a way to know whether web buyers are incremental and valuable. See When Should a Mobile Game Launch a Web Shop? and Linking Discovery and Monetisation.
Sources: provider websites; Metaplay, “Picking the Right Web Shop for Your Mobile Game” (updated 2026).