The regions where MiHoYo directly facilitates genshin impact top up in US dollars include the United States, Canada, and some international servers. However, the actual cost is significantly affected by exchange rate fluctuations and handling fees. Let’s consider American players, for instance. By replenishing $100 (about 710 yuan) on Google Play, they need to bear a 3.5% platform handling fee (that is, $3.5), and an across-the-border transaction fee of 1.5% for credit cards. The actual amount of Genesis Crystals obtained is 5% less than the price. (Data source:) Mihoyo’s 2023 Payment Annual Report. In case Turkish players use the US dollar to bypass the local currency (the lira has devalued 44% within the year) and top up across regions through a VPN, it will trigger the geofencing system (IP location error ≤30 meters, payment card BIN code detection), resulting in an account ban rate as high as 87% (MiHoYo 2023 Risk Control log).
The hidden fees of topping up US dollars on third-party websites are all various. Codashop International Version does support US dollar payment, yet the average loss from exchange rate conversion is 2.3%. For example, if you top up 100 US dollars, you will receive only 97.7 US dollars’ worth of crystals. On the other hand, Brazilian players replenished in local currency through the Pix instant payment system, reducing the transaction fee from 6% to 0.8% and the arrival time from 3 minutes to 8 seconds, and this accelerated the growth of the Brazilian region’s transaction volume by 39% in 2023 (as per the Central Bank of Brazil). Be careful with gray and black product channels – in 2023, the “CrystalDeals” platform in the Philippines fake a US dollar payment interface, with a promise of “zero handling fees”, but the effective arrival rate of money was merely 19%, and 78% of the payments were unrecoverable (Philippine Consumer Protection Bureau case).
Regional pricing strategies can lead to arbitrage space. Due to the government’s policy of compulsory dollar settlement, the unit price of crystallization in the Argentina area of the App Store was as low as $0.009 per piece in 2023 (the average price in the world was $0.015), which attracted players to top up across regions. That said, MiHoYo improved the possibility of identifying violating operations by as much as 92% through triple verification of device time zone (±2 minutes difference), SIM card country (geographical consistency ≥90% between the latter and IP address), and payment card BIN code. Ban time for first-time violating operations was raised from 7 days to 30 days (source: MiHoyo Compliance White Paper).
Technical optimization of payment tools affects actual revenue. Alipay’s “Game Privileges” channel offers the locking of the exchange rate function. The exchange loss cost of replenishing 1,000 Hong Kong dollars (approximately 128 US dollars) has been reduced from the normal 2.3% to 0.5%, and the arrival success rate of funds is 99.5%. However, with the fixed exchange rate range (14% volatility per annum) and a handling fee of 3.5%, the effective cost of PayPal increased by 17.5%. The Japanese players replenishing US dollars through the DMM platform with WebMoney can get a 5% cashback of points, but with a 10% consumption tax, the net rate of return is -3.2%.
The “cheap dollar” in the black and gray production channels is risky. In 2023, the Indonesian police cracked the “PrimoFarm” case. The criminal gang used hacked credit cards to resold the stolen goods at 60% of the market price (at a unit price of 0.009 US dollars), which resulted in 15,000 accounts being banned and players losing an average of 35 US dollars (data from the Indonesian Cyber Security Agency). According to the data from MiHoYo, the complaint resolution rate through non-official channels is only 5%, while that through official cooperative platforms is up to 96%, and the fund recovery rate has increased from 3% to 92%.
Compliance instruction: The most cost-saving path for replenishing US dollars is as follows: 1) Official activities (e.g., double rebates for the “Lantern Festival” with a 100% repayment rate); 2) Local authorization platforms (e.g., Codashop with 6-12% cashback); 3) Exchange rate locking instruments (e.g., Alipay to reduce foreign exchange losses). Avoid non-compliant channels that request discounts over 15% since their account ban rate exceeds 85% and they don’t qualify for the limited character card pool (e.g., the reissue of “Navilite” requires a total compliant recharge of 648 US dollars to unblock). Technically, biometric payment (with a 0.001% false recognition rate) and the PCI-DSS authentication interface are still the best trade-off between cost and security.