Everi Holdings has launched its third cashless mobile wallet since December as the technology starts to take greater hold in the gaming industry.
Everi, the provider of land-based digital casino gaming content and products, financial technology and player loyalty solutions, will make even more wallet-related announcements for gaming properties in the coming months.
The latest is the phasing in of the launch of the JACK Mobile Wallet, a cashless mobile wallet at the JACK Entertainment property Thistledown Racino. That will soon be followed by the Jack Cleveland Casino once it’s approved by Ohio regulators.
In December, Everi announced it went live at the WinStar World Casino and Resort in Oklahoma and Seminole Casinos operated by the Seminole Tribe of Florida.
The first phase at JACK Thistledown Racino includes the cashless funding feature that enables remote enrollment, deposit of funds to the wallet via mobile, kiosk and cage options, along with touchless access to funds at the kiosks via the “Money To Go” ($ToGo) feature, according to Darren Simmons, Everi’s executive vice president and FinTech business leader.
This allows for a seamless integration of digital experiences alongside the original options available to ClubJACK members, Simmons said. The next planned phase of implementation, subject to regulatory approval, will include direct funding of game play at the VLT and slot machines, with additional features to follow, such as food and beverage and retail outlet purchases, he added.
Everi’s CashClub Wallet is a mobile digital wallet that enables casino operators to offer their guests the option of cashless and contactless funding of electronic game play across the casino floor. Everi empowers casino operators to successfully deliver on all aspects of the emerging mobile ecosystem, including funding at the gaming device, payments at point of sale, or funding for sports betting or social gaming – all while providing customers with multiple options to access funds while on the casino floor.
The CashClub Wallet technology will be phased in to assist with velocity control for responsible gaming and will be integrated with JACK’s loyalty application and back-end system.
Casinos are starting to move towards cashless, contactless and cardless gaming, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic has raised its profile and accelerated discussions, Simmons said. Everi was the first company to espouse the benefits of cashless technology even though it generates a lot of transactions and revenue related to ATM services, which Simmons said are still popular.
“This is something that’s been on our roadmap for several years now,” he explained. “We made a number of investments through acquisitions and our own innovation to bring this concept of a digital neighborhood to fruition.
This is not new for us. We have been evangelizing cashless digital wallet technology for several years.”
Simmons, who said Everi considers itself like a bank within a casino, said they’ve been espousing and educating their customers on cashless because it’s a fairly significant transformation that companies have been trying to wrap their heads around for a few years in terms of what the opportunities are for their businesses.
“One of the things we like to talk about is how we leverage the current infrastructure of products and services that are mission critical for our customers today for supporting this transition to digital,” he shared. “If you have been in gaming for a while, one of the biggest challenges that operators have is that when there is something new that they want to bring in, it’s really their ability to consume it. It’s got an impact for their organization from an enterprise standpoint, an impact to their technology and impact to their employee base.”
The easiest way to do that is to leverage what exists today in terms of products and services that Everi provides, Simmons said. That includes Title 31 anti-money laundering regulatory compliance and responsible gaming.
“The digital wallet is integrated into all transactions because we’re the largest provider of AML compliance tools in the gaming industry,” he noted.
Everi acquired loyalty platforms in 2019 to allow casinos to enroll customers into players clubs and provide a platform for promotions.
“We acquired that because we knew that in order to pivot towards digital and use of cashless and mobile apps and digital wallet technology, you have to integrate that into these loyalty and promotional engagement platforms,” he said. “These mission critical tools that we are providing our customers today are all part of what we’re delivering to our customers. If you think about it’s all integrated into the products and tools that we’re providing them.”
Simmons said they’re pleased with the feedback they’ve gotten from players and customers who’ve been measured in rolling out the technology to be successful.
“It continues to grow in terms of acceptance,” he reported. “I have said many times as you pivot towards digital and cashless there are components that are going to be somewhat revolutionary and some that will be evolutionary in terms of penetration and uptake and usage. It will be organic in its growth depending on the operators.
We work with the operators in terms of how they want to deploy and what the marketing is, but at the end of the day it’s not our wallet. It’s their wallet. We are not selling our brand. We are selling their brand. It’s all customized for them for delivery to customers and how they want to market it.”
They’re happy with their progress and response from operators in how seamless it has been and how patrons have adopted it. He said it’s not disruptive and gives a great customer experience.
“The people signing up for wallets weren’t necessarily in (our) database,” Simmons explained. “They could have been anonymous ATM customers and we’re probably seeing some folks transition from that, but I would say in terms of what we see is new blood and new money coming in. I think that’s our view long term about how it will play out, and the early indicators are we are successful at that.”
Simmons said they’re happy with the diversity with the demographics, which is in line with digital use outside of gaming. He believes Everi’s strength is the ability to deliver this in many different ways through a mobile app or player card interacting at the game.
Everi has done integrations with Scientific Games and Aristocrat and is working with other companies.
Everyone wants to have a frictionless and straightforward digital engagement with the consumer and have a great app, but most apps fail because they don’t bring value, he said, adding that they don’t do what they say they’re going to do.
“There’s way too much friction and we’ve invested very heavily in making sure that the player experience is as frictionless and does what we say it will do for the end consumer,” he continued. “We have done an admirable job of being the leader and able to deliver a very robust and well thought out solution that at the end solves what the operator wants to accomplish.”
This isn’t a brick-and-mortar play, emphasized Simmons. Operators want this to be able to connect with their sports platform, igaming platform and their retail platform, he said.
“We have given the operator the ability to connect an omnichannel digital wallet, and we’re the only ones that actually have that,” he continued. “We like to describe what we have as multi-platform, multi-property and multi-jurisdictional. Those are critical components of what we’re delivering. The operators trust in us from a security, risk and regulatory standpoint and responsible gaming. We’re leveraging those mission critical things that we’re providing today. Financial services is our bread and butter. Loyalty and AML compliance are our bread and butter.”
There’s a complexity for delivering an omnichannel digital wallet solution into a myriad of jurisdictions from tribal and commercial to different states where there are different rules, Simmons pointed out. Everi has built something that he calls “the spoke for the operator” that addresses the jurisdictional challenges to be able to deliver a single solution among multiple platforms, multiple jurisdictions and across multiple platforms.
“We have solved that and nobody else has,” he said. “Nobody else has.”
