A digital wallet for making slot machine and table game bets is not enough by itself to attract more people to casinos, Noah Acres of Acres Manufacturing says.
“Going cashless is not changing the player experience,” he said. “We take a more holistic approach,” with a digital wallet that allows bonus payments, comp awards, and a host of other ways to give players more fun for their time at a casino.
For example, players using the Acres Wallet could be eligible for a double jackpot when the local sports team scores or, with regulatory approval, they could play a slot offering mammoth nationwide progressive prizes.
An operator also could offer jackpots tied to a celebrity event. For example, on the weekend of a Mixed Martial Arts fight featuring a popular figure such as Conor McGregor, a throng of his fans will be in casinos. With the Acres Wallet, a casino could offer a “McGregor Jackpot” on any number of its slot machines.
The Acres Wallet even includes a bonus game of its own, which Noah Acres said is the first of its kind.
Acres Manufacturing, based in Las Vegas, was founded by Gaming Hall of Fame member John Acres, Noah Acres’ father and the inventor of player-tracking technology and progressive jackpots.
Its Foundation casino management system launched this summer at three Penn National casinos in Pennsylvania, with more locations set to begin using it later this year. Foundation collects real-time data from every connected slot machine, can interface with any other data source, and can award instant bonuses to individual players based on criteria set by the casino.
Like other digital wallets, the Acres Wallet allows cashless transactions to buy slot machine credits or table game chips and move money to and from a player’s bank. In addition, Acres Wallet incorporates the player’s loyalty club information and automates awarding and redemption of player incentives instantly.
“We see cashless as a commodity,” rather than just a convenient payment method, Noah Acres said.
The Foundation system collects 120 data points per spin, compared with 24 data points every 10 to 15 minutes from typical existing systems, the company says. Among the data Foundation records are the amount of each buy-in, the denomination of each bill or TITO voucher, the pace of play, and the size of each bet. It can tell when a player is on an extended losing streak and can be programmed to award an instant bonus of free play.
Noah Acres said the past 15 to 20 years represent a “gigantic missed opportunity” for the gaming industry to increase its appeal to new and existing customers.
Nevada’s slot machine revenue peaked in 2007 at $8.45 million, according to the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The Great Recession, which started the following year, often gets the blame for slots’ underperformance since then, but Noah Acres pointed to another factor: the growing popularity of smartphones. The iPhone debuted in 2007; the T-Mobile G1, the first Android consumer phone, became available in 2008. By 2011, 35 percent of Americans owned a smartphone, according to Pew Research Center’s first survey of smartphone ownership. That reached 51 percent in January 2013 and 85 percent in February 2021.
While fans of traditional slot machines aged, the gaming industry was slow to adapt to the expectations of the millions of people who grew up amid smartphones, social media, and online games, Noah Acres said.
Customers are unlikely to embrace a digital casino wallet that works at only a handful of casinos and does nothing more than move money between the bank and the casino, he added.
“We’re going to give them a lot of other benefits on top of the digital wallet,” Noah Acres said. “We’re all about changing the player experience.”
While Acres Manufacturing will not have its own booth at the Global Gaming Expo, live demonstrations of the Acres Wallet can be scheduled on the exhibition floor or at the company’s office in Las Vegas.
