BRANDS
Prize Payments was created to provide tournament organisers with the opportunity to safely transact prize money to its competitors, ensuring that global payment regulations are followed and that the process is smoother for both the payer and payee. The idea of the firm was dreamed up during Park’s time leading ESL North America from 2014-2018, when he discovered that an esports-specific payments solution has yet to be fully developed. As a result, he opted to create Prize Payments to fill this void in the industry. Explaining his decision to launch Prize Payments, Park stated: “We dealt with a lot of prize money [at ESL]. Everything from weekly online cups for $50 USD all the way to the million-dollar payouts for Halo. What we found is that, because of the payment complexities and the rules and regulations around compliance changing, it’s really hard to pay people cash. There’s no solution out there that focuses on the logistics and the compliance side. “You can use PayPal to transfer money, but because the prize money is
considered taxable income in a lot of countries, it has to be reported and the information that you collect of the payees has to be privacy compliant. Those are the challenges that I ran into at ESL and I said: If we’re encountering this and we’re doing all of these white label productions for all these game publishers... when they take their programmes in-house, there’s no way their corporate accounting teams are going to be able to do this compliantly unless they staff up. “Every company is going to need at least a chance to look at a third-party solution that’s holistic, turnkey, and mitigates corporate risk,” he added. “That’s why I launched the business. It was something that was needed.” Following its inception, Prize Payments has already secured partnerships with the likes of Ubisoft, Sega, LiquidDogs, and PG Esports. These agreements have undoubtedly highlighted that there was a need to develop the esports industry’s payments sector. In January, Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Siege Nordics Championship delivered player winnings to Denmark, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany,
and the United Kingdom, with 95% of the competitors opting for direct bank transfers via Prize Payment’s platform. The players received their prize money within 15 hours of the transfer. Due to its early success, the payment solutions provider partnered with DreamHack this September in order to integrate its platform into the organiser’s online competitions. According to Park, the agreement showcased how Prize Payments’ willingness to adapt to the current climate has proved to be a success. “Initially, the approach was that we wanted DreamHack for their large prize pools from their big events,” he said. “DreamHack is known for these tentpole events around the world. They’re handing out large sums of prize money on behalf of the publishers for the games that are at their festivals. So we know that there’s a lot of payees that are receiving
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