The kings top up platforms officially authorized to partner with Tencent (such as wechat Pay and QQ Wallet) offer the highest security level (PCI-DSS certification), with recharge success rate of 99.8%, but generally no additional discount on the price. Third-party authorized platforms such as Codashop, however, have introduced regional promotions in the Southeast Asia market. For instance, Malaysian players topping up 100 Malaysian ringgit (equivalent to around 21 US dollars) will receive additional 12% diamonds, reducing the effective unit cost from 0.014 US dollars per diamond to 0.0123 US dollars (12.1% discount rate). The site reduced the fee of transaction from 6% to 1.5% through local payment channels (Boost, GrabPay) (source of data: Codashop 2023 Operations Report).
Exchange rate arbitrage was traditionally a major way of acquiring high value. In 2023, when the Turkish lira depreciated by 44%, Turkish bettors restocked $100 worth of diamonds through local payment systems at an actual cost of only $56, equivalent to a unit price of $0.009 per diamond, which is 35.7% lower than the global average price of $0.014. But after Tencent improved its risk control system (three verification of IP, device time zone, and SIM card country), the rate of identification of such cross-regional recharges reached 94%, and the banning rate of offending accounts reached 88% (Tencent Games 2023 Security White Paper). More dangerous are the black and gray industry channels – in 2022, the Indonesian police solved the “DiamondFarm” case. The stolen credit cards were used by the criminal gang to resell diamonds at 60% market value, and 13,000 accounts were suspended, with players losing on average 28 US dollars (Indonesian Cyber Security Agency statistics).
Regional operator activities make short-term high value. AIS Telecom in Thailand held an event in 2023 called “Recharge 599 Thai Baht (about 17 US dollars) of phone credit and get 300 diamonds for free”, which boosted the overall return rate by 18%. But since there was a quota limit (only 30,000 first-time users), the quota was exhausted 23 minutes after it was opened. The Brazilian players have been replenished through the Pix instant payment system with a handling charge of only 0.8%. The delivery time has dropped from 180 seconds for credit cards to 8 seconds, which has accelerated recharge transactions within the region by 37% in Q4 2023 (Central Bank of Brazil Payment Report). However, it must be noted that some platforms attract users with “false exchange rates.”. For instance, “TopUpGuru” in the Philippines indicates that “1 US dollar =7 diamonds” (official exchange rate 1:5.7), whereas the actual arrival rate is only 32% (investigated by Philippine Consumers’ Association).
The performance of the payment channel significantly influences the actual value. Wechat Pay has started “Game direct Recharge and password-free payment” based on its social platform. The arrival time has been cut from 15 minutes of conventional banks to 3 seconds with a failure rate of just 0.1%. The cost of cross-border recharging using international credit cards increases by 5.7% due to a processing fee of 3.5% and a 2.2% loss on foreign exchange. Japanese players are offered a 5% cashback on points for settling WebMoney payments through the DMM platform. But since Japan’s consumption tax has been increased to 10%, the net return rate has declined to -2.3% (Data source: DMM 2023 Payment Research).
Officially limited events are the main ways of retrieving excess value safely. On the Honor of Kings Friends Festival of Honor on May 5th, 2024, players who top up a cumulative amount of 500 yuan or more can enjoy unlocking the special skin “Shanhezhi Lingxiao” and receive an additional diamond of 150 yuan as a gift, increasing the net return rate by 23%. Tencent’s financial report shows that such activities pushed the highest daily recharge income to over 230 million yuan, a year-over-year increase of 41% (data source: Tencent’s Q1 2024 financial report). On the other hand, most of the “first recharge double” promotion on unofficial media is false – home Kuaishou live-broadcasters created “40% discount diamond” recharge pages in 2023 that cheated and requested users to enter payment passwords, and the quantity involved within a day exceeded over 850,000 yuan (Jiangsu Cyber Police reported).
General evaluation: honor of kings top up, both safe and cost-efficient, has to be given priority for the reasons below: 1) Formal operations (refund rate 15-25%); 2) Area authority platforms (e.g., Codashop with cashback of 7-12%); 3) Operator partnership (temporary refund rate: 18-20%). Players must avoid non-compliant channels that offer more than 30% discounts – Tencent data shows that the ban rate of such accounts exceeds 85%, and the fund return rate is below 3% (monitored by consumer rights protection bodies). Technically, biometric certification of wechat Pay (with a false recognition rate of 0.001%) and real-time risk control intercepting (with a fraud transaction intercepting rate of 99.5%) remain the optimal balance point between value and security.