According to Gary Larkin, President of Koin Payments, cashless payment solutions in the gambling industry are fast evolving, but in the end, success begins and ends with the player.
“If you don’t get it right, you don’t satisfy the player,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what you’re doing for the casino operators. It isn’t going to work. It isn’t going to scale. It isn’t going to get adopted. And we’ve seen that time and time again in a wide range of verticals, where various payment solutions have come and gone, and haven’t resonated with the consumer.”
With the Koin network, casino and resort operators can take advantage of a fully integrated payment management solution for cage, table games, sportsbook, and retail transactions.
Payment methods, including bank ACH transfer, Venmo, direct deposit, and Marker Trax digital credit, reduce merchant processing charges and cash-out activities while providing extended revenue opportunities both in and out of the resort.
Koin is an industry leader in transforming the gaming resort experience for the digital age. Koin bases its product on what is a proven platform for traditional services being used all over the world. The Koin team has key members who were amongst the first to participate in the provisioning of mobile payment solutions in markets like Central America and Southeast Asia, and some tough emerging markets (in Guatemala, for example, a mobile funding program for peasant farmers).
“We grew up in payments, solving for mobile-enabled payment accessibility,” he says. “We are very used to taking on unique challenges. That sets us apart from everybody who grew out of gaming, and all its inherent legacies in technology. The fact that we are payment people was a differentiator for us [in the gaming world].”
How is Koin evolving in the digital payment space in the gaming industry, an area that is fast changing? Various payment solutions have come and gone, after all.
Koin has spent a lot of time in the last two years focusing on delivering what they see as the most superior patron experience available in the gaming space. They have most recently invested in what Larkin said is “substantial” reinvestments of human resources and capital outlay in redefining and evolving the whole player experience.
“What should [the player experience] mean?” he said. “What does it need to do for the patron, the consumer, beyond paying for a wager? What does it need to do to make them want to use it more frequently so that it becomes a more persistent part of their entertainment experience overall? And I think that would be where we have distanced ourselves from our competition, who continue to focus in a very insular fashion on gaming itself.
“Our view is that you have to give people ways to access their money, 24/7, whenever and wherever they choose. Not to define places where they are restricted in using this kind of payment mechanism. And then, make it easy and similar in all those environments. So solutioning for the omni channel involvements which include sports betting, table games, online purchases, and igaming – making this a ubiquitous, single, seamless experience for the patron has been our mission.”
Larkin said where they are transforming the Koin experience over the next 12-24 months will help change how people think about cashless and gaming. “We took a whole different, futuristic look at how we should be solutioning for the gaming industry, hospitality, and entertainment industries, one ecosystem of entertainment, which led to a complete redevelopment of our core architecture, how we utilize AI and intend to utilize it in the future,” he said, adding that it’s about finding ways to save operators money while adding value to the consumer.
How fast are casinos moving to cashless? The movement has been slow. There is no current “point of pain” that cashless immediately solves, Larkin said. People can find cash inside a casino. But it does impact the casino’s business because players sometimes have to break patterns to get more cash or are restricted in terms of how much cash they can get. Still, more casinos feel that cashless will reduce operating costs and allow players to choose ways of paying more seamlessly in real-time. Those early adopters “are clearly showing traction in creating lift. But it requires a jump [for casinos],” he said, meaning a capital investment or an operational investment. “So, is it going to lift? Yes. Will it reduce operating costs by taking all the cash handling off the floor? Yes. But it is going to take time for us to get there.”
Companies can see a lift of anywhere between 15 and 30 percent in economic outcomes when moving from traditional cash-based to digital currency management. Koin is helping share the cost of bringing cashless to their partners, to lessen the burden.
Players get comfortable with cashless quickly – the viral effect is clear and certain – but it will still take time to reduce the cash on the floor to a point where operational costs will drop because of being cashless.
Casinos are also creating one more data point of digital management created with the customer – so an operator can better understand not only what the consumer is doing inside the property, at the restaurants, hotels, and games, but also their pattern of payment behavior outside the property.
From that operators can build in benefits and rewards tied to the customer’s lifestyle.
Convenience is a big part, but so is security. Most people are used to digital payments via Venmo, PayPal, and the like. Euronet, the electronic payment services company, became a large investor in Koin.
“They are the second largest money remitter in the world, second only to the Western Union,” Larkin said. “So, they have incredible data security capabilities, and we’ve been blessed to be able to build our platform inside of that ecosystem with enormous security.”
Koin just introduced a new brand identity, reflecting the company’s evolved vision, and forward-thinking approach, which includes a new logo and color palette.
“We increasingly recognized that we needed to be part of bringing the consumers to the casino, not just playing off who the casino already had as a customer,” he said. “And if we were going to do that, we needed a consumer-facing brand. We needed an identity that was quickly recognizable alongside the brands like Visa, MasterCard, Apple Pay, and Venmo. It needed to exude confidence, strength, and a contemporary entertainment feeling to the consumers. That is consistent with how we want to be seen going forward, as part of their entertainment lifestyle choice, whether it’s communicating with their friends on where the best tickets are in Las Vegas on a weekend, where the hot slots are, or how they access a table at the best restaurant.
“Whatever they want, that falls into that inner entertainment lifestyle, we want to be part of helping facilitate, either by helping them pay for it, better, smarter, faster, less expensively, or gaining better rewards, or just simply communicating with each other.”
