Removing the middleman
NUVEI: ALLEVIATING PAYMENT PAIN POINTS FOR THE US IGAMING MARKET NEIL ERLICK, CHIEF CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT OFFICER,
speaks to SBC Leaders about his experiences within iGaming, the Mazooma acquisition and how Nuvei is ‘removing the middleman’ for its partners BY ERIN GALLAGHER
SBC: First of all, can you tell us about your experience within the iGaming industry - how did you first become involved in this space? NE: I actually got my start in the space 21 years ago. As a young kid, hearing about a dot.com company in the sports & entertainment industries is really what piqued my interest. This was really when the online gaming market was just in its infancy stage. I worked at Paysafe for just over 19 years where I ran their online gaming business, which going back to 2000, was something which was obviously quite innovative as online gaming was brand new. You could say that I’ve been involved in the industry pretty much since day one! As the North American market gained
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momentum, I knew there would be some complexities that we would need to navigate through from a payments perspective, so I wanted to stay close to the operators and build relationships directly with the key stakeholders in the industry. Building these relationships is something I’m really very proud about. Back in 2015, I think I was the first payment professional to be voted on to the board of directors for the Fantasy Sports Trade Association and then in 2017, I was named among the Global Gaming Business 40 under 40. I currently sit on the board of the American Gaming Association. I’ve had the chance to use my expertise and look at the industry from a different lens, not from an operator perspective, but from the payments perspective. That then brings us up to now, where I fell in love with the story that
is Nuvei. The growth, the strategy and the vision of the company is incredible. I’m running the corporate development side of things for Nuvei, but obviously lending my expertise in iGaming as we continue to expand our presence in North America. SBC: On a general level, what would you say are the biggest challenges for operators when it comes to payments? NE: The first challenge is that gaming has always been viewed as a high-risk industry. We definitely have a different approach; we look at gaming as a highly regulated industry. So when you combine a highly regulated industry like gaming with a highly regulated industry like payments, we actually look at it a little bit differently in that we wouldn’t really see it as a high risk business anymore. But certainly over the years, the biggest issues were: how does the regulation change from country to country? And what does that mean for the operators? What do they need to do? What do we need to do to provide our services across the many countries around the world? Today, Nuvei operates in more than 200 countries across the world. You have to consider that every country either has different deposit types or different rules on regulations to be able to provide your service. You can then imagine the amount of compliance and complexities that go along with that. That’s certainly one issue. The second issue, which has been ongoing for years, is the acceptance rates for the operators. How do they have the highest approvals for their customers who are wanting to come to their website and deposit? The challenge for us then lies in making sure that we can give them that ability. From an acceptance standpoint, these operators are spending millions of dollars in marketing and attracting
