Ahead of this week’s major B2B event for the online gambling industry, ICE London (taking place 7 to 9 February at ExCel London), The Fintech Times chatted exclusively with Vadim Drozd, CEO at FinteqHub about developments in the iGaming sector.
Drozd has more than seven years’ experience in the fintech industry, managing firms in the B2B technology sector including payment service providers, cashiers and banks. Prior to building the payment gateway product at FinteqHub, he succeeded from automation engineer to head of the QA department.
FinteqHub is a PCI DSS certified payment gateway for online businesses that provides access to integrations with various payment systems via a single platform. The application allows businesses to create and manage requests for financial transactions, set up processing rules, and provide analytical summaries of financial flows. It started its journey in 2019 and put together a team of 85+ top-nock professionals with solid legal, financial and technical expertise.
In our interview with Drozd, we discussed the iGaming impact on the fintech development, current trends, and the function a payment gateway serves in the business.
Vadim, how closely are fintech and iGaming related?
The iGaming industry is experiencing a technological boom, welcoming new innovative products, tools, and features to increase player engagement. As a result, online payment transactions are skyrocketing. Many companies run several projects managed by one PSP department. Given these factors, operators are constantly looking for flexible, stable, and multifunctional fintech solutions to streamline their financial flows management.
What is the impact of iGaming on fintech?
iGaming is a young industry undergoing dynamic regulatory changes. Increasingly stringent and localised legislation is forcing market players to quickly adapt to the new reality by finding additional payment solutions and expanding to new markets. Payments must be redefined to ensure the quickest possible delivery of deposits to in-game accounts, so that players won’t waste time waiting but immediately embark on their gaming journey.
What fintech trends can you name in iGaming?
One of the key trends is the growing acceptance rate – the successful to total transactions indicator. It approaches 100 per cent for crypto payments, which is not the case with fiat currencies.
Secondly, winning are the technologies enabling instant access to deposited amounts and quick withdrawals as it helps build player loyalty and trust towards the brand and, therefore, generate more profit.
The third trend is developing a simple and intuitive interface.
What financial technologies and functionality are most demanded by operators? What is the market lacking?
When it comes to payment solutions, it is the level of service that becomes paramount. Operators want a partner who is ready to solve any problem and do it quickly.
A B2B partner’s expertise is another important concern. When launching or scaling up an iGaming business, an operator wants to know in advance what acceptance rates to expect, what payment methods are reliable and effective, and what licences can be used in a particular region.
Speaking about the payment functionality, we see a demand for integrating new payment methods in tight timeframes, often in a matter of days.
What is the function of a payment gateway in an online transaction?
A payment gateway acts as an intermediary between a business and a payment system, offering a number of compelling benefits.
First and foremost, it is a one-stop and fast connection of all necessary payment methods. In particular, FinteqHub offers a flexible payment infrastructure accommodating a large number of sites and dependencies.
Special mention should be given to the cascading – the process ensuring a seamless redirection of a rejected player card transaction to another acquirer.
What risks does a payment gateway eliminate for businesses?
First of all, a payment gateway is used to ensure that players’ data is stored safely. FinteqHub lends operators its expertise in selecting proven payment systems across different regions. Choosing payment service suppliers on their own, operators with no experience in iGaming are exposed to a risk of hitting into mala fide payment systems and incurring financial losses.
As for FinteqHub, we recommend only proven payment service providers. Over the past 10 years, we have been consolidating our expertise on the markets of Europe, Latin America, Australia and Oceania. Now, we are expanding to new geos, such as India.
What makes FinteqHub stand out among similar products?
FinteqHub was created by the iGaming-savvy payments team of SOFTSWISS for similar teams of our future clients. We’ve built a fintech solution to solve actual payment-related issues of online casinos and sportsbook projects. Our technologies allow fine-tuning payment methods, which has a direct impact on the acceptance rate. Few payment gateways would give so much attention to this. What is more, our product operates as a comprehensive back office with a user-friendly design and intuitive interface.
How is the integration performed?
A new client onboarding starts with a careful examination. If we conclude that FinteqHub’s capabilities and functionality align with client business needs, the integration process is initiated.
The FinteqHub team walks clients all through the process. What is more, we offer assistance in developing and maintaining a robust payment infrastructure, leveraging our own experience.
Apart from iGaming, in what other industries could FinteqHub find demand?
In the future, we are planning to work with ecommerce projects and streamline B2B support in launching new payment systems into a separate business direction, with FinteqHub providing its technical solutions.
