We’re excited to be doubling down on Appcharge, participating in their $58M Series B led by IVP alongside Brevan Howard, Creandum, Play Ventures, and strategic investors including Supercell, Smilegate, and Playrix. Sometimes the best investments are the ones where conviction only grows stronger and Appcharge is one of them.
The 30% Store Tax Problem
Mobile gaming is projected to hit $200B by 2030, yet a massive inefficiency still dominates the ecosystem: the 30% store tax. Developers hand over nearly a third of their revenue to Apple and Google, while losing direct access to their own players. It’s like paying a landlord who not only takes your rent but also controls your customer relationships.
Appcharge flips this dynamic.
With Appcharge, publishers can launch fully branded web stores that mirror the feel of their game. Players see beyond a payment page, entering into a seamless extension of the world they’re in. Behind the scenes, Appcharge enables hyper-personalized offers, timed to where players are in the game and localized to where they are in the world. By tapping into a network of 500+ payment methods and cutting fees to just 5%, studios gain a step-change in margin, direct ownership of the player relationship and the data that powers smarter liveops and monetization.
Conviction in the Team
What first drew us in wasn’t just the product, but the people behind it. Co-founder and CEO Maor Sason had already built and sold an ad-tech company before turning his focus to solving the problems he lived through as a studio operator. Co-founder and GM Roei Barassi brings deep DevOps expertise, having scaled complex infrastructure across gaming and tech. Together with a leadership team from Google, Microsoft, Huuuge, Xsolla, etoro and Moon Active, they have the domain DNA to build tools for developers, not outsiders.
As Maor puts it:
"We built Appcharge because we lived through the frustration of losing 30% of our revenue while being completely blind to our own customers. The mobile ecosystem shouldn't force developers to choose between profitability and player relationships. Our platform proves you can have both."
Roei adds:
"The technical complexity of building a compliant, scalable payment infrastructure has kept most studios trapped in the old model. We're handling that complexity so developers can focus on what they do best: creating amazing games."
Proof at Scale
Since our initial investment, Appcharge has grown with remarkable velocity. Over the past year, Appcharge processed over $500 million in transactions and grew revenue by 14x. Its platform now supports 100+ mobile titles, with publishers reporting profit increases of around 35% alongside stronger player retention.
This traction validates not only the need but also the inevitability of Appcharge’s model. Developers gain margin expansion, richer data, and durable customer relationships, creating a flywheel for growth that simply isn’t possible under the traditional store model.
Timing the Perfect Storm
Recent legal rulings, including Epic’s high-profile battles with Apple and Google, have shifted the ground beneath the app store model. Direct-to-consumer distribution has moved from niche to inevitable, with developers and regulators alike pushing for alternatives that give studios more control over their margins and player relationships. Appcharge is here to make that happen – at scale.
Building the Future
Our conviction is simple: direct-to-consumer isn’t just better for developers, it’s inevitable for the industry. That’s why we’re proud to stand alongside world-class investors and strategic partners in backing Appcharge at this next stage.
The roadmap doesn’t stop with mobile games. From consumer apps to PC to SaaS, Appcharge has the potential to redefine how digital commerce works across categories.
Jasper Brand, Partner at BITKRAFT, summarized our conviction:
“Appcharge represents everything we look for in a follow-on investment: a massive market opportunity, regulatory tailwinds, and a team with the domain expertise to execute at scale. Their growth has been rapid, with major studios not only adopting the platform but expanding it across entire product portfolios – even in cases where direct-to-consumer infrastructure was already in place. That kind of land-and-expand traction shows us they’re not just reducing fees; they’re fundamentally changing how mobile developers think about customer relationships and lifetime value.”
We believe a new era of app payments is here and that, with Appcharge, developers finally get to own it.
