GPWA Times Magazine - Issue30 - October 2014

tive payment methods that the operators need to focus in on. Whether that's an ACH solution, whether it's a cash pay- ment solution with a voucher, there are a number of different types of solutions. Or, whether it's NETeller, which has different opportunities and different methodolo- gies for making payments. As an opera- tor, you need to find ways to deal with the rejects in an intelligent way that directs your players to other alternative methods where there is probably a very significant degree of success that that payment will be approved. And that really was the rai- son d'etre for NETeller, to offer all of those different payment solutions so there's 100 percent conversion rates. I think some of the more intelligent opera- tors know how to identify the bins that are going to be rejected, so before they even go through that process they're directing their customers to NETeller and saying, "Hey, take a look at NETeller as an alter- native to credit cards because your credit card may be rejected." But that's more a matter of the intelligence and the sophisti- cation of the operators anticipating results before they even happen. The biggest thing is education. It's educa- tion from the operator to their customers. And your example of the customer try- ing their credit card over and over and over, it's going to happen on some sites. But some of the sites that are more so- phisticated won't allow that to happen. So the second the operator knows that that credit card is going to be rejected, don't tell the customer to try again and try again and try again because it's frus- trating and you're likely going to lose that customer. What you should be doing, es- pecially if you know beforehand that it's going to fail — and these are some of the tools we help provide — is guide them and incentivize them to use an alterna- tive payment method. You're spending all of this money getting the customer to your website and at least he's going to be able to make a deposit instead of leaving frustrated. VN: Alternative payment methods are one of the big things bubbling up. They're big in Europe, but not quite as big in the U.S. Skrill: There's a dramatic difference. In Europe, per country, you might have 20 different payment methods, specialized just for that country. Even outside of Europe, if you go to South America, Bra- zil, there's a very specific set of payment methods you need. In the U.S., we are still learning what works. But as far as pay- ments go, people know what they need to pay for something. That's why Visa and MasterCard are so important. The majori- ty of people don't even think (about some- thing else). They get to their gambling site, they get to Tropicana and they've got their card in their hands. You have to have a really hot alternative payment method to get in the mind of the consumer at that point. Apart from the prepaid cards that are out there, I haven't seen anything that's that interesting and I think that the options available to U.S. customers are significantly less than those available to Europeans. And that's a bad thing. It's also more of a function of the fact that credit markets/card acceptance markets are so mature that everyone is wired and can accept a credit card payment. You go to the smallest bodega in the middle of the city and they've got a credit card pro- cessing terminal. Whereas you go to some other countries, even first world (coun- tries), and you just don't have that kind of penetration. So there was a necessity (in Europe). In the U.S., we have more credit penetration as well. More of the consumers have credit cards at their disposal. The key has always been to aggregate all of these al- ternative payment methods so an operator can have one contract, one integration and a hundred different payment methods. In the U.S., we asked ourselves, "What do we need?" We have PaySafe card for cash, we have ACH for banks, we have an alternative bank transfer method and we have cards. Is there anything that we're missing? We don't feel like there is at this time. Maybe something to do with loyalty. Some sort of points thing. I think we've got everything mapped and locked down for right now. We just need to work on Visa acceptance getting higher. It's ter- rible, not just for us but for everybody. VN: Is it reasonable to expect consumers to put the pressure on their banks to ac- cept gaming transactions? Optimal: Right now less than 4 percent of the U.S. population can wager online legally. That's how many can wager. The number of people trying to use their cred- it cards when you look at the big picture is so small that for the credit card compa- nies, the issuers right now, it’s tough to go reverse policies that were set years and years ago. The demand isn't necessarily there yet at large enough scale. Everyone talks about California being the elephant everyone is waiting for. I think once Cali- fornia happens, Pennsylvania happens, things like that, you'll have millions of consumers who are now able to play, (and) I think you'll see a lot of changes. VN: So for now, it's an outreach issue. Education, getting the word out. Skrill: Why are our competitors sponsor- ing the World Series of Poker? Why are we sponsoring other poker tours? It's all about getting the message out there. It's outreach. It's education. And we're go- ing to try to do that in the most cost ef- fective way to reach the highest number of people. In Europe, per country, you might have 20 different payment methods, specialized just for that country. . . . In the U.S., we are still learning what works.” – Skrill 35 Reach out to players in the funnel at the right place and time