Pay and play your way

Martyn Hannah, Founder and Managing Director of online casino comparison site, Comparasino, on why he believes Pay & Play casinos will dominate the UK market in the years to come

One of the biggest challenges online casinos face is guiding players through the sign-up to deposit journey as they encounter tons of friction along the way.

From having to submit ID documents and entering the incredibly long number on the front of their debit card, it’s an arduous process that can take up to ten minutes.

But this is not the user experience that players want nor expect, and this is why drops off during the sign-up process remain incredibly high.

This is an issue that has been overcome in other markets through the introduction of Pay & Play which first arrived in Sweden back in 2015.

But ten years on and Pay & Play casinos have yet to arrive in the UK, a market where players remain frustrated by long and painful sign-up processes.

To learn more about Pay and Play casinos and whether they are ever likely to arrive in the UK, we spoke to Martyn Hannah, Co-founder and Managing Director of online casino comparison site, Comparasino.

Pay & Play casinos have been popular in countries like Sweden for many years but have yet to really make a mark in the UK. Why is this?

It’s mostly due to the KYC and AML requirements imposed on operators by the UK Gambling Commission. The Pay & Play casinos that emerged in Sweden in 2015 allowed players to make a deposit and start playing at the casino without having to register first. This doesn’t work with the requirements in the UK, where players need to register and have their ID verified before they can make a deposit and start playing. Some operators and payment providers have looked to reduce friction in the onboarding process – instant banking solutions from the likes of Trustly, TrueLayer and Vyne have expedited deposits and withdrawals, but it’s not quite the same as the pure Pay & Play casinos found in Sweden and other Nordic markets.

Will we see Pay and Play casinos arriving in the UK anytime soon?

Yes – in fact, there are a very small number available to players in the UK right now. Pay & Play is actually a Trustly product, and the payment provider is trialling a “lite” version of Pay & Play for online casinos in the UK. TrueLayer has a similar solution, SignUp+, that it’s also been trialling with a small number of operators over the past few months TrueLayer claims SignUp+ can take a player from registration to deposit to playing in less than a minute. Again, it’s not the pure Pay & Play experience available in other markets but for UK players, it’s about as close as they will get with the current regulations and requirements in place.

How do Pay & Play casinos work in the UK? Is the experience different than in markets like Sweden?

The solutions being trialled by Trustly and TrueLayer are slightly different from each other, but they work in pretty much the same way. The player arrives at the casino and taps the prompt to sign up and deposit via Instant Deposit. They then select the amount they want to deposit followed by their email address, password and mobile number. Next, they select their bank and are taken to their mobile banking app where they sign in. After that, they are automatically returned to the online casino where their account has been created and their deposit made. I’ve done it myself and it literally takes 30 seconds from arriving at the casino to being able to play.

How does the technology actually work?

The KYC process is done through the player’s banking app while they are making the deposit. While this happens, in the background, the payment provider collects the verified KYC data from the player’s bank account as well as external data providers and shares those with the operator who can then create the account. This all happens pretty much in real-time. For the player, it means they don’t have to enter all their personal and financial details, nor do they have to submit documents to verify their ID or income. It pretty much removes all friction from the onboarding process.

Why should players sign up at Pay and Play casinos?

Because Pay & Play removes the usual friction encountered when signing up at an online casino for the first time. At some brands, this can take up to ten minutes. This is far too long and is why players ultimately drop off. With Pay & Play, they can create an account, make a deposit and be spinning the reels in less than a minute. Better still, they can take advantage of instant payouts because Pay & Play uses Trustly and TrueLayer’s instant banking solutions both of which provide instant withdrawals.

How big is the Pay and Play opportunity in the UK?

For me, it’s the future of online casinos in the UK. Trustly and TrueLayer are payments pioneers and with Pay & Play and SignUp+ they have changed the game. I expect that once both companies have completed their trial periods with the small number of operators they are currently working with, we will see it rolled out at scale. Ultimately, it drastically improves the user experience to the extent that drop-off could almost be eliminated. Throw in the fact that players can also enjoy instant payouts and you overcome two of the biggest pain points players face at online casinos.