Be it Amazon or Starbucks, Etsy or eBay, cashless payments are the principal payment method in most daily transactions. Via cards or card numbers, cashless payments drive almost every aspect of commerce.
Except casinos, where slot players still feed bills into machines and table game exchanges for chips are usually cash. It’s as if the gaming industry is stuck in a pre-21st century time warp.
Sightline Payments Angela Kritz agrees that cashless systems are “lagging in implementation.”
“We’ve seen some early adopters of cashless, but I think there have been some barriers,” Kritz says, adding “In a lot of cases, it requires brick-and-mortar casinos to modernize their infrastructure, upgrade their hardware. The second barrier, I would say, is, I think, in some cases, it’s wait and see. They want that cashless experience to be seamless.”
One of Sightline Payments’ first clients, Resorts World in Las Vegas, is already on its third cashless payments’ iteration. However, much of the gaming industry lags, even as the technology to implement cashless systems is in place.
In a recent column, CDC Gaming’s Buddy Frank, a veteran writer and expert on gambling technology, indicated that the gaming industry has long had the means to adopt cashless systems.
“Technically, slot machines had the ability to go cashless with the adoption of the SAS 5.01 communication protocols of the late 1990s,” Frank writes. “And certainly, even better with the implementation of SAS 6.0 in July of 2002. Both enabled AFT or Advanced Funds Transfer. That’s another name for cashless.”
According to Carol Thompson, Marker Trax chief marketing officer, the gaming industry is hesitant to adopt cashless because of its historical relationship with cash.
“We’ve been relying on cash. That’s what we’re used to,” Thompson says. “But the perspective is changing, and I think more operators are becoming more open to (cashless) and I think they see the value in it.
“Our product with cashless markers, or our sister company, Koin’s product with a wallet, what it really does is it gives the operator one more tool to really enhance that guest experience, and at the same time, it can really improve some of your operational efficiency,” Thompson adds. “I think the industry is starting to realize cashlessness is here, and they’re starting to see the benefit and the impact as either they bring it on or their colleagues bring it on.”
The technology that cashless systems require can be provided in a single package that solves an operator’s cashless needs.
PayNearMe is a bill payment platform providing operators with all the tools to implement a cashless solution. Leighton Webb, PayNearMe’s vice president and general manager of igaming and sports betting, says a company often must invest in its core product or a payment solution.
Webb says that using the PayNearMe platform mitigates any concerns about cashless payments. “And frankly, it’s an area they don’t necessarily have a lot of expertise in,” he says
“It then puts in place the ability to process PayPal, Venmo, the card networks,” Webb says. “It helps them avoid having to go out and do individual contracts with multiple providers. And related to that is the onboarding process. We handle the onboarding process through all our partners. … And then we also have one settlement, so we settle all funds directly to the merchant. So, there’s a lot of administrative, regulatory complexity and getting payments approved. We make that easier as one partner, being able to simplify that.”
Thompson thinks there are three essential things that a provider such as MarkerTrax solves for operators: Streamlining the cashless application process from a day or two to approximately five minutes; not allowing the money to “walk” and be used at another property; and making credit available to the majority of players, not just high-worth gamblers.
“It really creates a positive experience for the player, and it gives you one more benefit for your loyalty program that you can offer any players in your database,” Thompson says, “because the operators set the criteria for what makes a person approved for the product. They set that criteria. We just custom-build that product so they have that underwriting built in, and they can extend credit from $100 all the way to $5,000 or more.”
It’s important for operators to realize the realities of modern life: A certain demographic – certainly for those under the age of thirty – has not used cash in their everyday transactions. And other facets of daily transactions do not support cash transactions.
Kritz says it’s important for operators to think outside of the gaming space and “put their consumer hat on.”
“Do you use a mobile banking app, or do you still go into a branch?” Kritz says. “How did you pay for your airline ticket? Do you use Uber? It’s those everyday examples that everybody relates to, and that’s why in these conversations with operators, they get it, they understand it, because as a consumer, this is how they transact every day.”