September sees the introduction of a new set of regulation and safeguards applied across a number of European regulated gambling jurisdictions, further complicating roadmaps and relationships between igaming operators and their payment services providers.
The SBC Summit Barcelona Digital conference opened its day one Payment Expert Track assessing how payment and compliance teams will adopt and adapt to necessary instant changes keeping their operations compliant with imminent demands – a tough challenge for any business sector.
Opening discussions Andrea McGeachin CCO Neosurf asked the panel to detail what they believe are the imminent challenges of payment and compliance enforcements placed on operators and their suppliers.
Responding, Marius Galdikas CEO ConnectPay acknowledged that ‘compliance is a big deal as its driving betting’s operational agenda’.
“The most recent challenge we are facing are requirements related to ensuring an aggregate limitation on PYES set at €15,000. This is complicated as we have established good working relationships with merchants, but not with their customers, who we must now personally verify to use our services.”
Olga Golikova Head of Payments at Parimatch acknowledges Galdikas’ frustrations at being required to provide a further layer of player verification as a third-party payment systems provider for regulated market incumbents.
“I wonder why customer verification is so different for our industry, when PSP laws are set as a standard across Europe. This is an issue as it’s hard to tell the customer that you are being transparent when you have to ask them to fulfil another level of documentation with an external partner.”
McGeachin interjects whether operators are being forced to present ‘the same piece of compliance but in a different way as PSPs have to accommodate their own personal demands’.
Working across diverse high-risk industries, Tiago Veiga Head of Business Development Aurum Solutions agrees with McGeachin’s observation stating that “We can all agree that the same piece of payment legislation can and will be interpreted totally differently, not only from country to country but from regulator and merchant perspectives”.
Veiga further underlines that he has never met “a Financial officer, head of payments or compliance director that wants their reports to look the same because let’s face it each division has its own preferences”.
For high-risk sectors Veiga underlines that issues are further complicated as “PSPs can grow and disappear like mushrooms – here on day and gone overnight!”
Paul Bolton founder of betting compliance consultancy Payment Strategy, agrees with Veiga’s ‘mushroom assessment’
“it’s a great line to lead off…but I would go further than that, saying that technical interpretations change within a country from company-to-company.
“Say you are betting operator seeking to launch in a new market, and you want to partner with five local PSPs, each one will want the same thing, but will ask for it differently with varying requirements”
Bolton underlines that the European roadmaps will be further complicated as ‘there is no longer a readymade pack’.
Reflecting on personal experiences, Bolton notes that operators have had to swallow the ‘worst-case scenario’ entering new markets where their tech teams have had to hold the payment merchants’ hands through the entire process.
Bolton notes that he has witnessed a number PSPs guided across all key integrations (installation, ), only for the compliance teams to pump the breaks on at the last minute – a fractious resource draining scenario that all parties will want to avoid.
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SBC Summit Barcelona – Digital is a FREE to attend virtual conference and exhibition running from 8-11 September. To register for your free ticket or find out more please visit – https://sbcevents.com/sbc-summit-barcelona-digital/registration/
