When Sightline Payments representatives meet with tribal casino operators, naturally there are questions.
What can you do for us? What are the advantages of cashless payments? And perhaps the one question that hangs over all business deals – you just want our money, correct?
Jennifer Carleton, Sightline Payments Chief Legal Officer, understands the questions.
But from her vantage point, it’s important that tribes see the company in a different light: As a resource for whatever the tribe needs to successfully launch a payment solution, including working with regulators.
“When we sign a contract with a tribe or any casino, our job then becomes ensuring we get it right,” said Carleton during an interview with CDC Gaming at the recent Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas. “We become familiar with their particular regulatory landscape. We work with them, in some instances, to help develop cashless regulations.”
Most of the challenges in establishing cashless payments for tribal or commercial casinos are similar: Patrons need to be educated, and safeguards need to be established for funding processes. There are concerns about money laundering and fraud.
“The only key difference between an Indian gaming environment and a commercial casino environment with regard to payments is jurisdictional,” Carleton said. “The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was established (in 1988) when digital gaming didn’t exist. And there is a very geographic element to it. Until what the Seminoles did recently in Florida, tribes have not been able to overcome that barrier.”
Because the Seminole Tribe has a very small footprint, they were limited as to where sports betting was permissible. The tribe was able to petition Florida regulators and allow “border-to-border” sports betting anywhere in the state.
Carleton said the Seminole Tribe solved that issue, and it has been upheld in federal court.
“Other tribes are now looking at it,” Carleton said. “For example, in Colorado right now, there are two tribes who have sued the state to get similar treatment.”
The challenges of installing cashless payments on tribal properties can be daunting. Each tribe has its own regulations and rules.
“From a digital perspective, it’s going to depend on their compact, which state they’re in, and do they offer those kinds of wagers over the internet,” Carleton said.
In Michigan, state law was changed to allow tribes to offer border-to-border sports betting, Carleton added.
“Their challenges were very different,” she said. “But they did want to offer digital payments to their patrons.”
Perhaps the biggest hurdle for tribal (and commercial) regulators is getting them to understand that gaming is no different from any other digital transaction. Want a Starbucks card? You set it up online. Need a bank account? Hardly anyone goes to a brick-and-mortar bank to do business.
“We’ve become very comfortable with existing in that ecosystem,” Carleton said. “Except when it comes to gaming. The goal is to educate, not just the patrons, but the regulators as well, about getting that same comfort in a gaming transaction and establishing gaming loyalty & bank accounts.”
