Focus on Everi: Everi mobile technologies merge financial tech and marketing tech

Friday, October 11, 2024 8:00 AM
  • United States
  • Mark Keast, CDC Gaming

Everi Holdings Inc., a pioneer in the Fintech space, went into G2E this year even more focused on mobility, data convergence and connectivity.

According to Francis Keyser, SVP of Product Management at Everi, and Victor Newsom, SVP Product Management, Payment Solutions at Everi – a global payments, Fintech and crypto expert – G2E offered a unique opportunity to refine their messaging.

“I think that Everi’s digital neighborhood, along with our ‘crawl, walk, run, fly’ product strategy, has matured and allows us to meet both the operator and patrons where they’re at,” Keyser said.

Everi is a premier provider of land-based and digital casino gaming content and products, financial technology, player loyalty, marketing technology solutions, and bingo.

Everi’s accomplishments speak for themselves in terms of the volume of cash transactions in the gaming industry that the company’s tech has been facilitating.

Everi’s recent Fintech offerings feature the BeOn platform that offers a comprehensive suite of mobile, financial access, loyalty, RegTech, and enhanced marketing solutions. The newest product enhancements highlight Everi’s ability to develop solutions that enable mobile-first self-service capabilities throughout the patron journey.

Newsom pointed to how these are exciting times for the Everi sales team when talking about the company’s evolution – they now get to share some of the user interfaces and the new product features that are extensions of the underlying infrastructure that the company has been building and talking about for a decade.

“We started with the EMV technology shift in 2015, did the digital neighborhood, starting in 2018, and then we launched the wallet in 2020,” he said. “And then we started doing new transaction types and products, like concierge product at the table, and the ability to send the TITO ticket back to your card anywhere. My excitement level is high, as we’re starting to expose technology that just existed as potential a couple years ago into real user experiences, remote products that you can see, touch and feel. You get to see more of that this year, I think, than ever before.”

G2E is an opportunity for companies in the industry to work together. Everi had a big screen in their G2E booth, showing off their technology, and held a live drawing for multiple prizes.

“I think as an industry we do better when we work together, and we’re open,” Keyser said. “Be respectful of each other’s IP, stick to your own customers for the first few days of the show, but I’ve always enjoyed that last day, a great chance for all of us to come together, talk about ideas and about how to advance the industry.”

More specifically, Keyser says G2E offered Everi an opportunity to focus on areas like loyalty engagements, since that’s where the customer journey begins. He was specifically focused on Everi’s mobile-first BeOn platform.

“That’s how we can meet both operators and patrons where they are in their digital journey,” he said. “We have web portals that can be embedded into the casino’s website that can allow players to either enroll into a loyalty program with facial and document authentication, so a full KYC enrollment, and beyond that, it lets them see their loyalty information and participate or view promotions.”

If they’re ready to move to a more premium mobile offering, casinos can engage players that are not part of the loyalty program – the casinos can let them get into the app, where they see booking, they see information about the location, and resort amenities. They can do hospitality functions, valet, hotel booking key card, all while they’re still gathering some great marketing details and information about the patrons, so they can still engage them with emails, texts, and push notifications with the platform and prime the customer for the next level of loyalty.

“If they’re ready for that next level after that, then that’s where the casino can start turning on all these different product offerings, to have them engage with cashless, loyalty, real money gaming, all these different offerings that can either generate more revenue, save costs, or create more enriched player engagements that trigger return visits,” Keyser said.

“If you think about like mobility and data convergence, connectivity, that platform has a rich Martech stack. So that’s a data lake, location services, call it notifications, emails, alerts, triggers, and that’s really collecting all of that patron data for a much wider view of the customer, and that’s all while they’re off property.

“And so that gives you a better way to segment the players. It lets casino marketers see what, when and where your players are spending money outside the casino walls. And this lets the casino better offer the patron value and create engagement points to influence return trips.”

Added Newsom: “I think there are a couple of buzzwords the whole industry needs to be very sensitive to. One is convergence – convergence of land-based and online, convergence of sports wagering and the gaming floor, convergence of retail and off-property activity being influenced or executed with on-property solutions.”

Newsom said Everi sees mobility not as a stand-alone solution, but as part of a package. The client has channel choice – composable payments, or payments orchestration, all designed to enhance a patron journey. It’s no longer about how to get funds to a slot machine. The new technology is about how the casino property can engage with the patron.

“It starts well in advance of the patron stepping on the gaming floor,” he added. “Then we have the data. A mobile-based loyalty patron will engage, be more dynamic. They’re more native and more durable. But if you add a wallet to that experience, they’re even more engaged and more durable.

“We all have talked in the wallet world about the lift and spend, but now that we have this great data across channels, we’re seeing that if you give the patron enough access to enough of their finances with enough information and enough of the right tools across, whether it’s a kiosk, a table, a slot machine, their phone, the cage, a restaurant, they spend money better and tap into their credit line less.”

What they do then is continue to look at new products and services that feed on that, and provide more choice.

“You get a profile in how you spend your money, from rewards, to funds you set aside for a particular gaming event,” he said. “Or maybe you skip that and use a card on file to make a purchase because you want your Air Miles points, and you want to keep your gaming money.”

You’re starting to see all these products, services, and user experiences that Everi provides – built around connectivity, data, mobility – so that the patron has a “mobile cage.”

“The patron can do some of those things under your operator’s internal controls and responsibilities in a way that’s more convenient for your patrons and develops a better relationship with your patrons than forcing them to stand in line and come to you,” he said.

“Take it to them. So, there’s all this stuff you’ll see at the show. You can start to see not just the tools but the journey, the experience, that those tools can provide.”

It’s a revolutionary merging of Fintech and Martech.

“When you layer in loyalty and wallet, you see this huge bump in brand retention and brand engagement,” Keyser said. “I think it’s special what we are doing. We’re not seeing it anywhere else.”

Not every operator is in the same place of course. There’s no one-size-fits-all technological solution for every casino.

“A key pillar has been collaboration with the operators and active education with the regulators,” Newsom said. “It’s understanding that many operators are at different points in their own journey. They’ve got different digital strategies, different technology, different economics, different customers, different staffing challenges. We have to be prepared to go in and optimize where they are right now. Get them on a journey. That makes for a lot of work, a lot of strategic decisions.

“What’s the right choice, right now, to position them for the right choice tomorrow? By doing that we have had some strong successes, with the most successful wallet deployment in the country,” he said. “Not a single one of those is identical. It’s an ongoing evolution and operators see the benefits right away.

“I’m very sensitive to the fact that we have customers with a lot at stake, and many of whom understand how they got where they are and are being successful, and they don’t see the future competitive gap is opening up that we see very clearly if they don’t move today.”

In the end, Everi’s customer is not just the patron, but the operator as well.

“So, it’s a win-win-win concept,” said Newsom.