Thrilling as welcome promotions often are, they usually come with a major downside. And that’s the mild annoyance that comes with signing up for a new online casino!
You have to wait longer for your first withdrawal as the KYC procedures are carried out. Depending on where you’re playing, you may not be even able to make a deposit before your identity is verified!
Identity verification is also its own can of worms. You have to send a scanned personal documents to the operator. Or you have to take pictures of said document, sometimes while holding it next to your face.
All of these inconveniences are something pay and play casinos hope to solve. We know the basic formula works: it has proven popular in Denmark, Norway and Germany.
Instead of having to create an account, players can deposit using Trustly. Instead of gamblers registering and sending personal documents, Trustly collects all personal information from the player’s bank account. That information is then shared with the casino, who can use it for ID and KYC purposes.
A winning formula all around! Gamblers no longer have to face delays before they can deposit and start playing. Meanwhile, operators do not have to manually verify information: it comes pre-checked via Trustly.
Not without its flaws
Of course, no concept is perfect. Since the player never formally registers with a phone number or an e-mail address, gambler retention can be difficult. Marketing, personalized promotions and other incentives regular casinos offer are not possible for pay and play operators.
So while you do get the advantage of letting the player try things out immediately, you have a harder time keeping them there. But there’s always a work-around. Operators can offer additional promotions for gamblers who provide the casino contact details.
Screen Scraping Snag
What even is screen scraping? It happens when an online payment provider asks the consumer which bank they’re with. When you input your credentials, the payment provider can then impersonate the user, and extract data from your account.
The data the payment processor sees in your account is the same information you would have. Your balance, most recent transactions, that sort of thing. It then passes this information on to the operator.
But for screen scraping to work, this information has to be unencrypted. And we’re certain we don’t have to tell you what a major security risk that is! The payment provider has to store the log-in details to perform screen scraping. Now imagine if the log-in information of thousands of people was leaked online, leaving their bank accounts vulnerable to anyone.
In our eyes, this will be a major hurdle that the financial sector has to overcome before pay and play casinos can enter the mainstream. We doubt something as insecure as screen scraping will fly in highly regulated markets like the UK.
An Inevitable Future
Pay and play may be in its infancy now, but the potential it offers is too strong to remain untapped. Every good idea starts with early adopters, which is the stage we’re in right now. The next step is a platform provider or an online casino operator to take it mainstream!
But doing so will be undoubtedly complicated. Applying pay and play to highly regulated markets will take a lot of ingenuity. And it’s not something that casinos and payment processors can pull off on their own.
Regulators will have to get involved, too. All sides will have to make adjustments and changes if we want to make this innovative way to play happen. But we don’t doubt that it will work.
In a world where every entertainment medium is only a few screen taps away, competition for gambler attention is fierce. If the iGaming industry hopes to continue growing, it will have to make the barrier to entry as seamless as possible. Pay and play is simply the inevitable outcome of that goal.