CoinPayments recently wrapped up its latest expo, ICE London 2024, which took place from February 6th to 8th. During the expo, Gambling Insider’s Beth Turner talked through a range of important issues with Sean Mackay, CEO of CoinPayments – including the most recent crypto bull run, helping iGaming operators to integrate crypto payments, safeguarding from crypto volatility and balancing player safety against anonymity.
The following is an extract of the interview. Read on for a brief summary or watch the interview now
Beth: Have iGaming operators become more aware of the benefits of crypto following the 2021 Bitcoin boom?
Sean: CoinPayments has been around since 2013. We’ve seen a few bull runs and a few crypto winters as well. In general, every time there is a bull run the media picks up more of the headlines and puts it out there. More people get involved and eventually it drives adoption for everybody. iGaming in particular is ahead of the curve when it comes to adopting new technology and have really embraced crypto, not just during this bull run, but before.
Beth: How do you streamline the onboarding process for operators accepting crypto payments for the first time?
Sean: We have a lot of different support methods but generally we build the integration for them directly into their platform. When we integrate with a platform, we can service hundreds of operators with just one integration which makes it super easy for the operators. They just have to check a few boxes and link their CoinPayments accounts.
Beth: How do you safeguard payments from crypto market volatility?
Sean: There’s a few different ways. By default, when you create a CoinPayments account it comes with a wallet for each of the coins we support, and whenever your players make a deposit in crypto it ends up in your CoinPayments wallet. From there you can have it automatically converted to another cryptocurrency like a Stablecoin or you can have it off-ramped into dollars or euros into your bank account.
Beth: How can gaming operators administer gambling safety measures when crypto payments are made anonymously?
Sean: I’m sure the operators are onboarding their players so they know who they are and whether that player makes a deposit with credit card or a bank transfer or crypto, they’ll know to attribute it to that player’s account, so it’s not really anonymous. That’s one part of it – we do actually do transaction monitoring for crypto transactions so we can see where deposits or withdrawals are coming from or going to, including any kind of blacklisted addresses.
Watch the entire video now as Sean Mackay engages in a lively chat with his host!
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