The Rise of Digital Wallets in Betting: Market Trends and MiFinity’s Role

From Niche to Norm: How E-Wallets Conquered iGaming Payments

When I started working in iGaming payments in 2017, e-wallets were a convenience – an option on the cashier page for tech-savvy punters who did not want to type their card number. Nine years later, they are the infrastructure. The global digital wallet market was valued at $56.77 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $145.35 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 20.9%. More than 5.2 billion people worldwide now use digital wallets, representing over 60% of the global population. This is not a trend – it is a structural shift in how money moves.

In iGaming specifically, the shift has been even more dramatic. Operators that offered e-wallets as one of fifteen deposit methods a decade ago now process the majority of their transaction volume through wallets. The economics drove the adoption: higher approval rates, lower chargeback risk, faster settlement, and regulatory compliance that card-based systems struggle to match in gambling’s complex jurisdictional landscape.

Global Digital Wallet Growth and Gambling Adoption

The global gambling industry generated $347 billion in revenue in 2024, with 18% year-over-year growth sustained between 2020 and 2024. That revenue has to flow through payment systems, and digital wallets are capturing an increasing share of the volume. 68% of online players in the US prefer e-wallets over credit cards for gambling, citing security and speed as primary motivators.

The drivers are consistent across markets. Card payments in gambling face structural friction: issuers decline transactions at higher rates for gambling merchant codes, chargebacks are more common in gambling than in most retail categories, and regulatory requirements (like Australia’s credit card ban) directly restrict card use. E-wallets bypass these problems because the wallet pre-authorises funds, eliminating issuer declines; the transaction is wallet-to-merchant rather than card-to-merchant, removing chargeback risk for the operator; and the wallet can comply with jurisdiction-specific rules at the wallet level without requiring the card issuer to implement gambling-specific controls.

In emerging markets – Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa – digital wallets are often the primary payment method, not an alternative. As iGaming expands into these regions, e-wallets are not competing with cards for market share. They are the market. Operators entering these markets must build wallet-first payment stacks, which reinforces the structural shift globally.

MiFinity’s Growth Trajectory in iGaming

MiFinity reached one million user accounts in early 2025, with thousands of new registrations daily. The wallet has surpassed 1,200 brand integrations across iGaming – up from over 1,000 in 2024 – and has been named the eighth fastest-growing financial services company in the UK by the Fast Growth Index. These are not vanity metrics. They reflect a company scaling rapidly within a specific vertical rather than spreading thinly across multiple markets.

Paul Kavanagh, MiFinity’s CEO, described the company’s trajectory in characteristically competitive terms: the growth over the preceding two years had “firmly put MiFinity on the map” and threatened incumbent players in iGaming payments. The incumbents he is referring to – Skrill, Neteller, and the broader Paysafe ecosystem – have decades of market presence and significantly larger user bases. But MiFinity’s advantage is focus. While the incumbents serve multiple verticals (retail, remittances, freelancer payments), MiFinity concentrates its engineering, compliance, and commercial resources on iGaming.

The launch of MiRewards in February 2026 – a four-tier loyalty programme rewarding payment activity – is the latest expression of that focus. Generalist wallets do not offer gambling-specific loyalty programmes because gambling is not their core business. MiFinity can because it is. Each product decision reinforces the specialisation, and each new operator integration extends the network effect that makes the wallet more useful to both sides of the transaction.

The competitive pressure MiFinity exerts on incumbents is visible in how those incumbents have responded. Established e-wallets have begun emphasising their iGaming features more prominently and adjusting fee structures to remain competitive. When a challenger forces incumbents to adapt, it is a signal that the challenger has achieved meaningful market penetration rather than occupying a marginal niche.

Australian Outlook: E-Wallets in a Post-Credit-Card-Ban Market

Australia’s credit card gambling ban, effective 11 June 2024, was the most significant regulatory catalyst for e-wallet adoption in the country’s betting history. Digital wallets already handled 31% of e-commerce payments in Australia before the ban. In the gambling sector, the ban forced a sudden migration from credit cards to compliant alternatives, and e-wallets were the most frictionless landing point.

The Australian online gambling market was valued at US$5.5 billion in 2025, with growth projected at 5.67% CAGR toward US$9.0 billion by 2034. That growing market needs payment infrastructure, and the regulatory direction is clear: more restrictions on traditional payment methods (credit cards today, potentially cryptocurrency restrictions or tighter card controls tomorrow), combined with an expanding e-wallet ecosystem that fits within the regulatory framework.

MiFinity’s positioning in Australia is strengthened by its AUD support, its FCA and MFSA licensing, and its iGaming-specific compliance infrastructure. As the market grows and regulation tightens, the operators and payment providers best equipped to serve Australian punters are those that treat compliance as a feature, not a burden. The digital wallet market is growing at nearly 21% annually worldwide. In Australia, regulatory pressure is adding fuel to that already fast-moving trend.

For a detailed look at the market size data and demographic breakdowns driving Australian e-wallet adoption, I covered the numbers in the Australian betting market size analysis.