Jargon and acronyms flew thick and fast at a Global Gaming Expo panel on “Omnichannel Igaming Strategies for Enhanced Player Engagement.”
Participating without the benefit of moderator were Ocean Casino Resort CIO John Ferrell, Pavilion Payments President Diallo Gordon, GeoComply Vice President of Business Development Sam Basile, and veteran Sightline Payments executive Omer Sattar.
The most significant hurdles, Ferrelli began, are threefold: content, know-your-customer registration, and payment processing. There was, he added, no strategy between the igaming and terrestrial-casino branches when New Jersey gambling went online. Registration, he continued, “is a real black hole,” causing customer confusion. Customers registered at brick-and-mortar casinos often have to be discretely recaptured online, often at considerable cost.
The answer, Ferrelli continued, is to try to merge online and terrestrial registration. This is something he urges tribal casinos to do as they move online.
“It was super-early when [New Jersey] came online,” Satter added. “The iPhone was five years old.” He likened the online experience to the various ways one has of ordering food at Chipotle, adding, “We have done an awful job of that with gaming.”
Gordon praised MGM and BetMGM for blending online and terrestrial signups. He added that he was “blown away” by hearing how much it cost — $1,200 a head — for Ocean to register players.
“We evolved,” Ferrelli responded. “This wasn’t a planned launch.” Ocean now, he said, is at a point where “we have to get better.”
Gaming has yet to fully exploit facial recognition or touch ID, Satter contended. “We should be using it” in KYC. “It’s been 15 years. It’s time to revisit some of those rules,” he continued, inspiring Basile to call for “one KYC to rule them all.”
“One of the problems we have in America,” Satter resumed, “is a lot of banks. We have to build infrastructure for 9,000 of them.” Money, he argued, is moving through an outdated infrastructure, not from bank to bank, but through clearinghouses. He posed the hypothetical example of a player borrowing money from a casino, then going home and canceling the payment three days later.
Gordon viewed the problem globally. “I truly feel we’re overmatched dealing with nation-states and the dark web.” Agreed Basile, “We’re in a create-your-device scenario,” where any procedure can be run from a computer desktop.
He also stressed the importance of identifying online actors. Basile said money-laundering mules set up casino accounts, then process their identity through desktop applications “and now, as an operator, you’re potentially exposed.” Verifying computer locations, he said, is critical. “You’ve got to have a third-party company that is just looking at the dark web and has the ability to respond to it. You need eyes and ears on that device.”
Most Department of Justice gaming fines, said Basile, are for failure to file currency-transaction reports and suspicious-activity reports. His word of advice to gaming companies was, “Track, track, track.”
Advising his listeners to acquaint themselves with the dark web, Satter said fraudsters have a limited amount of capital, generally, and need to make a return on it as they scavenge for vulnerable accounts. Basile added that the dark web is rife with malefactors bent on bonus-harvesting by opening account after account after account.
Apropos progress in the gaming sphere, Ferrelli said casinos are too focused on ATM fees instead of the cost of moving money. “There’s a lot of emphasis on slots,” he contended, “whereas the table game demographic is more interested in cashless.” But he said casino people are “cool” on ceaselessness, while players are “tepid” about integrating ATMs with table games.
Overseas, knowing one’s customer has taken on a Big Brother aspect, according to Satter. He described a walk-through gate in Qatar that instantly captures one’s data via facial recognition and similar technology is employed in Dubai. “It’s kind of scary. They can find anybody in the country in three minutes or less.”
In Europe, he added, it must be disclosed when one’s data is shared. When Satter tried to log onto ESPN, he found out that his data would be shared with 916 other companies.
He opted out.
