The desire for seamless payment experiences amongst consumers and businesses is driving unprecedented demand for innovative fintech solutions that can serve a fast-growing range of end use cases and applications. The beauty and ingenuity of fintech means that traditional non-financial businesses, like merchants in the gambling and gaming sectors, are now clamouring for sleek, secure payment experiences that can enable them to become part of this expanding ecosystem.
The pandemic only served to accelerate the already widespread interest in online entertainment in its various forms. During 2020, millions of locked-down consumers signed up to streaming sites like Netflix or Spotify to while away the hours, while others turned to online gambling and gaming. This led to an explosion of new customers, with more than 1.1 billion people gaming online in 2023, 100 million more than in 2022, and gambling becoming a market set to reach $154 billion by 2030.
What this means for a growing number of gambling and gaming merchants is the need to implement secure and swift payment processes, enabling them to serve customers from all corners of the world. This includes in-game microtransactions driven by easy and quick mobile payments, instant bets, fund deposits, withdrawals and pay-outs in real time.
But for merchants with no previous or limited expertise layering payment processes into their businesses, their search for digital payment acceptance capabilities is leading them to third parties like payment service providers who can provide the online gateways and platforms they need to grow.
With this e-commerce eruption bringing surging volumes of new customers and sales, gambling and gaming merchants are now being forced to deal with some negatives. Soaring demand is leading to platforms crashing, unable to handle sudden spikes in demand, leaving customers unable to access their accounts or close out their games or bets and leaving merchants exposed to angry and fearful customer complaints.
Another challenge is that accepting new customers is mired with difficulties related to regulations like AML and KYC. Merchants, many of whom have no payments or compliance expertise in-house, now find themselves needing to verify customer identities and ensure that fund sources are legitimate.
Balancing customer and payment data security with frictionless customer experiences demands a unique mix of skills, in-depth knowledge of payments regulations like AML and KYC, and platform infrastructure and development expertise, along with up-to-date knowledge of fraud prevention and CX optimisation that is difficult to find. If these processes are not managed or navigated correctly, gambling and gaming merchants could be confronted with expensive licensing, compliance and legal nightmares that could, in the worst-case scenario, end their operations altogether.
Getting a gambling licence is fraught with difficulties as regulations and requirements can vary massively from market to market. Some countries require the merchant to establish a physical presence to receive approval to operate. With merchant licensing costs typically eating around 30% of a merchant’s pre-launch expenses, that eats into financial resources which could otherwise be used to hire the right staff.
With merchant licensing costs typically eating around 30% of a merchant’s pre-launch expenses, that eats into financial resources which could otherwise be used to hire the right staff
With gambling and gaming merchants considered high-risk by payments processors and acquirers, meaning higher fees to accept payments, merchants are also at more risk of money laundering, fraud, and higher chargeback levels. Merchants in high-risk sectors will typically require much more specialised fraud management expertise to protect profitability and customer trust. The high volume of transactions in online gambling means even more money laundering monitoring challenges to overcome. A prime example is “smurfing”, a money laundering method involving multiple transactions for minimal amounts being made through an array of different bank accounts, which can evade AML detection.
With payment regulations changing all the time, inexperienced merchants struggle to keep pace with ever-tougher compliance demands. In May 2023, the UK government published its gambling whitepaper, revealing plans to make gambling safer with proposals like “light-touch” affordability checks. If mandated, these measures would require firms to conduct credit checks when customer losses breach a specified level. That would mean merchants and the fintechs they partner with have to build even more safeguards into payment processes.
With so many potential risks to watch out for, gambling and gaming merchants understandably want to prove they are trustworthy and can ensure their payment processes are safe and compliant with all regulations. As gambling and gaming grow in popularity, it’s also crucial that their online platforms are stable and can cope with volume surges, while also providing smooth UX design and enjoyable customer experiences.
As gambling and gaming grow in popularity, it’s also crucial that their online platforms are stable and can cope with volume surges, while also providing smooth UX design and enjoyable customer experiences
That’s what’s behind merchants increasingly choosing to work with expert, trusted payment providers who can handle compliance, acquiring and technical challenges with ease, so that merchants are free to focus on their customers. The fintech world is fast-moving and we’re starting to see virtual reality and blockchain-based innovations making their way into payments, including the gaming and gambling sectors. What’s clear is that the right talent, and the people with the right skills, are becoming harder to find. That means more obstacles to growth for start-ups looking to build payments teams or services with developers or product managers, or decision-makers at scale-ups or larger organisations that need more commercially or strategically focused talent at senior levels.
As current economic turbulence puts fintechs under even more pressure to innovate quicker at lower cost, and satisfy tougher regulatory demands with dwindling resources, more businesses are chasing fewer candidates. It’s vital that short-staffed fintechs serving the gaming and gambling sectors adopt a fresh approach to recruitment and retention and ensure they have continued access to the right people who can help them achieve their ambitions.
PaymentGenes Recruitment has been created to solve all of these recruitment challenges. We know that fintech recruitment is sorely underserved and this strategic partnership between two of the world’s leading fintech and payments recruitment firms, The Conexus Group and PaymentGenes, will leverage our combined resources and economies of scale to offer everything fintechs and merchants need under one roof.
Focused on services that underpin transactions across the entire fintech and payment ecosystems, PaymentGenes Recruitment can share sought-after knowledge and find the right people for all areas of payments relevant to the gaming and gambling sectors. That includes expert professionals covering AML and KYC onboarding, API development, payment processing, acquiring, orchestration, CX, risk and fraud management, and other areas in high demand.
With the collaboration of our specialist teams, gambling, and gaming merchants, and the fintech and payments players who partner with them, can now identify and recruit the right people, embed the necessary skills and empower businesses to hit their growth targets.
As gaming and gambling continue to enjoy soaring popularity and more markets worldwide liberalise laws, ensuring safe and seamless payment experiences will drive sustainable business success. Getting recruitment right at the start can save businesses vast amounts of time and money and help them to continue innovating to offer even better customer experiences.
