The latest episode of iGaming Daily’s Path to Lisbon limited series looked back on the Payment Leaders Panel from the SBC Summit North America.

Industry heavyweights from the likes of Caesars Digital, Nuvei and PXP Financial discussed the tech evolutions they expect to change the payment landscape in the next five years.

To begin the discussion, Matt Brezinski, Director of Gaming at Trustly, explained that one of the challenges facing operators is the time it takes for players to transition from the sign-up process to making their first payment.

As a result, he expects that more tools will be developed to help streamline the “long, strenuous process” of signing up in order to facilitate players wagering right away. 

Adding to the debate, Trent Striplin, VP of Payments and Fraud at Caesars Digital, said: “I would echo what Matt said. It’s interesting that customers provide the operator with their highly sensitive information to create an account to then go on and not fund their account.

“There’s a variety of reasons why they may or may not fund the account at the time. It could be the payment options, it could be that they wanted to see what offers were available, it could be that they wanted to review some of the markets.

“I think if we’re able to capture some of that drop-off, it not only helps businesses from a commercial and revenue standpoint but also it’s better for the customer. It presents a potentially better customer experience when it’s more seamless. KYC and payments are the two biggest hurdles that we face in the industry and some of the innovation that we’re starting to see is how do we combine those into a single step?”

A major development within the payments industry in recent years is the rise of cashless payments, especially through mobile wallet technologies like Apple Pay and Google Pay.

The increase in the use of cashless payments was accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic as people looked to reduce unnecessary contact. Everi’s SVP of Fintech Business Development, George Connors, explained that there is now a need for the payments industry to show that cashless payments are a “product that’s built for the future” rather than one born out of the desperation of a global pandemic.

Looking more specifically at the gaming industry, Striplin talked about how one of the problems cashless payments help to solve is the constraints placed on players in retail sportsbooks by the amount of cash they bring to the establishment.

He said: “Customers are constrained by how much they bring to the book and their ATM limits and one of the things we’re [looking at] right now is if there is an appetite at point of sale for debit transactions to place your sports bet rather than paying with cash. 

“And then it goes back to a cash perspective. Are we converting cash customers to a more expensive cost method or are you actually providing additional lift on top of the cash they would have spent, because now they don’t have to go to the ATM to spend $5 or $10, they can just use their card at the retail location to place the bet.

“Maybe they originally would have only spent the $100, now they will spend $200 so it’s something that we’re taking a look at now.”

Finishing off the discussion, Striplin added that Caesar’s is considering the benefits of an omnichannel wallet which would tie a customer’s gaming account with the Caesar’s reward card, which would allow players to use their winnings to pay for goods such as restaurant visits and hotel rooms through the Caesar’s omnichannel wallet.