The arrival performance of Zenless Zone Zero top-up on the MiHoYo official channels is distinct from its technical framework. In-game direct recharges (such as Alipay and wechat Pay), the median arrival time for Ether Crystal is 3 seconds (99.8% success rate). Statistics show that as of 2023, around-the-clock average daily transactions run over 12 million across the globe, with variability of delay being ±1.2 seconds during the middle of peak times (e.g., version update day one) (data source: MiHoYo Payment System White Paper). Third-party sites such as Codashop are connected directly through API, reducing arrival time to 5 seconds (with a standard deviation of ±0.8 seconds). But due to multi-bank routing requirements for cross-border payment settlements (such as SEPA and PIX), the failure rate rose from 0.3% to 1.5% (Codashop’s 2024 operation report).
The “pseudo-instant” risk on the black and gray production channels is significant. In the “ZeroFarm” case busted by the Indonesian police in 2023, the criminal syndicate utilized phony rollback payment messages, which said that “Zenless Zone Zero top up arrived instantly,” yet no actual money was paid, and 12,000 accounts were frozen, with players losing an average of 32 US dollars (Indonesian Cyber Security Agency data). These payment channels use unfiled payment interfaces, and the transaction links are not PCI-DSS certified. There’s a 97% higher risk of data leakage than in traditional channels (CipherTrace network Security report).
Local technology adoption affects efficiency. Brazilian players charged via the Pix instant payment system, reducing the time of arrival from 180 seconds with credit cards to 8 seconds. But since the Central Bank of Brazil’s clearing System (SPB) load fluctuation is ±25 seconds delayed during peak hours, the success rate dropped from 99.6% to 94.3%. Turkish players recharged with Turkcell’s phone credit deduction, and the funds arrived in 12 seconds. However, because of the 23% devaluation of the lira throughout the year, the real amount of Ether crystals obtained decreased by 19% year over year (MiHoYo regional operation data).
Blockchain technology is attempting to break the efficiency bottleneck. Mihoyo’s Polygon on-chain top-up feature to be tested in 2024 will verify automatically through smart contracts, reducing the time of arrival from the typical 72 hours to only 22 seconds and lowering the transaction fee rate from 6% to 1.2%. TrueMoney in Thailand piloted the Lightning Network solution with an arrival time of 1.3 seconds (±0.05 seconds error), but as digital currencies are limited by compliance requirements, the acceptance rate of the user was as low as 14% (Bangkok University Payment Behavior Research).
Payment instruments and risk management collaborate to establish the actual experience. Wechat Pay employs Tokenization technology (payment tokenization) to replace sensitive information with random tokens. Confirmation steps of recharging are integrated from 5 to 2, and arrival time is 2.7 seconds (uncertainty ±0.5 seconds). If a third-party platform triggers MiHoYo’s risk control system (such as an IP location error of more than 50 meters or strange device fingerprints), the fund arrival time will be lengthened from the quoted 5 seconds to 72 hours for manual verification (with an 83% chance of account ban).
The “speed-security” balance of compliance channels is the basic advantage. The success rate of the arrival of accounts to formal cooperative channels (such as MyCard) is 99.7%, and the account suspension rate is less than 0.1%. But as black and gray channels guarantee “5-second arrival”, the median account survival time is only 7 days (2.3-fold LTV loss as against loss of compliant users). The users must balance risk and efficiency – going for maximum speed could have a long-term price to pay.