6 minute read
GA HUDDLE: PAYNEARME
AS DEPOSITS. IN PARTICULAR, THE SPEED OF RECEIVING
THAT WITHDRAWAL IS REALLY, REALLY IMPORTANT FOR THE PLAYER." PAYNEARME, PAY NEAR YOU
Leighton Webb, PayNearMe VP iGaming and sports betting, joins the GA Huddle to discuss the key gaming payments trends to look out for in 2023
It’s a pleasure to have you on. Could give us an intro into your role and talk us through the company’s key offerings?
Absolutely. I’m the Vice President of Online Sports Betting and iGaming, responsible for the real money gaming vertical here at PayNearMe. Our key offering is our gaming payments platform, which we call MoneyLine. It’s an end-to-end payments platform and it gives operators the ability to process payments both on the deposit and the withdrawal side, through every major tender type. Those tender types include debit, credit cards, PayPal, Venmo, Apple Pay and, of course, our flagship cash product, which allows players to deposit at over 30,000 retail locations across the US – 7/11, Walgreens and more.
This year, you guys conducted some consumer research. Can you talk us through the main points you found when talking to customers out there?
Firstly, the variety of tender types of payment methods is critical. That’s because players want to deposit with payment tenders that they’re used to and ones they trust. That trust is an important part of offering that tender. When a player goes into an operator’s application to see something they’re used to and familiar with, when they make that deposit and ongoing deposits, that leads to the second finding in the research, which is that the initial deposit is critical.
Operators spend a lot of money to acquire a player. They go in, they go to make that deposit, and getting through and having a successful first deposit is critical to the lifetime value of that particular player. We saw in the research that a significant number of risk respondents would leave the operator’s application altogether if that initial deposit was unsuccessful. So really getting that right is vital. That’s kind of a combination of things: which is that experience, the design, the look, the feel, you know, minimising clicks to get them through that deposit and then also having a deposit method that the players know and trust today.
Thirdly, one of the highlights – and this is getting more and more talk in the press, and you’re seeing it at trade shows – is that withdrawals are equally as important as deposits. In particular, the speed of receiving that withdrawal is really, really important for the player. It’s in direct correlation to player engagement and ultimately lifetime value
Watch the full video online at gamingamerica.com/ga-huddle
of the player. In conclusion, operators are continuing to focus on that initial experience when the player makes that deposit to ensure it is intuitive and seamless. And they also want to have that speed on the outbound side to make sure that players aren’t having to wait days, weeks to receive those funds.
When it comes to leaving the app altogether, are the findings similar for withdrawals, not just deposits?
Absolutely, and this is true with any consumer-facing application not just related to gaming and sports betting, but it’s that overall experience. I always describe it as entertainment at the end of the day – and that experience has to be a positive one. It has to work. It has to be intuitive. And it has to be fast, especially if you think about the psyche of the player. They want that gratification, right? They want to be able to receive that cash either in their bank account or if they use the card with cash at an ATM product.
If you couple that with just the overall, as you know, competition in the US market, there’s not a lot of patience and tolerance for a bad experience because the player will just go to someone who does it better. So there’s this competition among the operators to make sure that cashier experience, both deposits and withdrawals, is continually optimised and continually improved upon.
Bearing in mind everything we’ve covered so far, can you talk us through the benefits of a single payments platform for operators?
The first is a single integration, which reduces development time and overall complexity around the payment stack. Many operators today are having to manage multiple integrations through multiple providers for the various tenders they offer within the cashier. As part of that single integration is also the benefit of one contractor contracting with one party, PayNearMe. There’s one settlement method that’s a particular issue. In some examples where operators are having to manage multiple settlements, there’s one partner to work with versus managing multiple contracts and partners. It becomes complex very, very quickly.
Lastly, I like to say this a lot as I talk to operators: they’re really future-proofing their payment strategy. All we think about, day in and day out is payments. It’s 100% of our focus, whereas operators are managing a lot of different things related to the business, a big part of which is compliance, regulatory approvals etc. So they’re really looking to us to be that expert in the future-proofing of their payment strategy. When we bring a new feature or a new tender type to market, it’s minimal work for them to make that available to their players.
From what you’re saying, is that particularly helpful during a big sports betting event, such as the Super Bowl or perhaps the recent FIFA World Cup final, where there’ll be plenty of settlements and payments going on at one time?
Yeah, 100%. A good example of that is something as basic as redundancy. Obviously, a sporting event is time-critical. Players are going in, the event starts and you know you can’t as an operator be in a situation where something fails. That’s an example of something that we would provide, to mitigate against that.
On a similar theme, can you talk us through the benefits of acquiring player payment data?
The first is, and I will talk a lot about this, risk and fraud. That’s an ongoing concern in our category. Data is critical to be able to mitigate against that. Secondly, the payments data really gives you insight into marketing. What do I mean by that? The ability to look at behaviour, the frequency with which players are betting, the amount they’re betting, allows you to really tune that marketing message to engage the player that’s not engaging, that has dropped off for some period of time – and really get to the ultimate goal, which is one-to-one marketing.
So to be able to take that message based on the behaviour of the player – the behaviour of the player really starts with that deposit, the amount of the deposit, the frequency, etc. Having that data and being able to connect that data into your marketing tech stack is really where these operators want to go: to be able to create that one-to-one message with the player.
