Okto and the development of cashless gaming

The need to use cashless payments in a growing retail and gaming sector is recognised by the Okto.Wallet development.

The use of cash in some European countries – already surging before Covid-19 came on the scene and now accelerated – was central to Okto, the fintech digital payments solutions suppler and its strategy.

Director of gaming at the Greece-based company, Simon Dorsen, said that his company’s Okto.Wallet app had been designed with the leisure and hospitality industry in mind. “It is user-friendly, affordable, secure and is socially responsible.”

He said that going cashless is not only the newest technology trend but also a strategic goal, notably when this comes as a complete cashless ecosystem and through an open and interconnected mobile payment app. With the virus, a generation of change has occurred in just a few months, he said. “This is forcing all sectors to reconsider their business models, how they interact with their customers and their routes to market.”

Pubs, he said were now reporting that 30 per cent of customers had already used a mobile to pay and cash had accounted for only 20 per cent of F&B sales. “It is now a natural progression to extend the choice of compliant digital payment to the gaming machine player.”

Operators needed to find the cashless system that suits the specific needs of his business and this was particularly true for complex retail environments such as pubs, adult gaming centres and casinos.

The selection of a reliable, licensed payment partner to help activate this digital payment strategy is critical. Okto, he said, had built a solution to meet the specification of the pub and leisure industry: a secure, open-loop, cashless end-to-end payment solution delivered through Okto.Wallet payment app designed to meet all the niche demands for retail gaming customers. It extended through any online business that accepted debit cards through the Okto Prepaid Mastercard linked to the Okto app.

Retail gaming and betting operators in the UK, Spain, Romania, Greece and Cyprus are already adopting the Okto cashless solution, he said.