Alexandre Gonthier is the CEO of Trustly, Inc., a global leader in open banking payments.
With the Super Bowl behind us as the grand finale to a record-breaking NFL season for sports betting, we gear up for another exciting season, from March Madness to the Kentucky Derby, and it’s worth reflecting on how far this industry has come. Beyond the stunning growth numbers—with the American Gaming Association projecting that 23.2 million Americans would wager an estimated $4.3 billion just on the Super Bowl—there’s a more fascinating story about innovation that deserves attention.
The sports betting industry has quietly created new paths to revenue through payment technology, setting standards that other sectors would be wise to explore. While traditional industries often view payments as a necessary utility, gaming operators recognized early on that payments could be a strategic advantage.
Why? Because sports betting operates in a unique environment where success depends on threading multiple needles simultaneously: instant gratification, fraud prevention, regulatory compliance and responsible gaming. It’s an industry where minutes of downtime during a major sporting event can cost millions and where customer trust is paramount.
The Innovation Imperative
Consider what happens during a major sporting event. Millions of transactions surge through the system in concentrated windows on weekends, outside banking hours. Legacy payment systems weren’t built for this kind of pressure and are offline on weekends. The industry had to innovate or fail.
As a result, gaming and sports betting operators became early adopters of real-time payments, bypassing the “ACH doesn’t work on weekends” problem that’s plagued digital commerce. They were among the first to embrace Pay by Bank solutions, recognizing that direct bank connections could provide the high transaction amounts and speed they needed and the security that regulators demanded. The settlement window challenge was solved when fintech innovators introduced the payment guarantee so players could instantly access their deposits during Sunday games.
More importantly, they understood that payment innovation wasn’t just about velocity—it was about creating a sustainable ecosystem that could support massive growth while protecting themselves and their players.
Setting New Standards
But perhaps most impressively, the industry found ways to turn payment friction into an advantage. While other industries struggled to balance fraud prevention with user experience, gaming operators developed sophisticated systems that blend authentication, know your customer (KYC), customer insights and payments into a seamless experience.
The results speak for themselves. Real-time payment volumes in gaming have grown exponentially thanks to better, safer customer experiences.
What’s particularly noteworthy is how the industry has managed to achieve this growth while strengthening its commitment to responsible gaming. Modern payment systems now provide unprecedented visibility into player wherewithal and behavior, enabling operators to identify and address potential problems before they escalate.
Raising The Bar
What makes these achievements more remarkable is the high bar gaming operators must clear. They operate under intense scrutiny, with zero tolerance for errors in areas like:
• Transaction accuracy
• Transaction approval rates
• System uptime and reliability
• Fraud prevention
• Responsible gaming controls
Success in this environment requires payment partners who truly understand these challenges. It’s not enough to offer risk scoring or basic payment processing. Partners need to have skin in the game, approving as many transaction requests as quickly as possible while guaranteeing payments against bad debt risks and also supporting the complex regulatory requirements of gaming operations.
The technical demands are equally daunting. Payment systems must maintain 100% availability and sub-second response times even during peak events, handle complex multicurrency transactions and provide instant reconciliation—all while meeting the highest security standards in the industry.
The Next Opportunity
As the industry continues to mature, we’re seeing new challenges emerge. The expansion of sports betting into new states brings fresh regulatory requirements. The growing sophistication of fraud attempts requires ever more robust security strategies. And the increasing expectations of tech-savvy consumers demand constant innovation in user experience.
This is where powerful consumer data can further set sports betting operators apart. Open banking technology goes deeper than simple account linking. It can uncover and deliver insights into a player’s affordability and spending behavior, revealing opportunities for operators to incentivize or slow down players at the right time like never before. Imagine creating offers and loyalty programs based on a granular understanding of a player’s financial background, such as disposable income and the other sites they’re spending time and money on. Pay by Bank has the potential to deliver unprecedented results.
Moving forward, the industry’s payment infrastructure is stronger than ever. The innovations that gaming operators already adopted are increasingly revealing use cases to other industries, from retail to financial services.
For those of us who were there for the early growth in the gaming/sports betting industry, this comes as no surprise. We’ve long known that if you can handle the complexities of sports betting payments—the surge volumes, the real-time requirements, the bad debt risks, the regulatory demands—you can handle anything.
Inspiration For Other Sectors
Outside of sports betting and gaming, imagine the opportunities that Pay by Bank/open banking payments present to retailers, billers and financial service companies. Sure, the cost of acceptance and approval rates can outperform card payments and BNPL. But the intelligence and insights that Pay by Bank delivers can set merchants in everyday spend categories apart from everyone else.
Open banking technology enables this smarter payment by giving merchants rich data points based on their customers’ financial profiles. For example, are customers shopping at a competitor website/store? If so, how often? What’s the value of the transaction(s)? What offers can you present to increase LTV based on the data?
Even more—merchants can inject the savings from Pay by Bank into a bespoke loyalty/rewards program to build LTV growth that outperforms credit card loyalty programs. We don’t have to look far; the Target Circle Card, a flavor of Pay by Bank, has deepened loyalty with its customers by rewarding their spending behavior with everyday discounts (5% off everything). In the telecom space, Verizon Wireless rewards its customers with a $10 per line discount for those who enroll in autopay and use Pay by Bank.
If the goal for merchants is to deepen relationships with consumers (and it should be), Pay by Bank is the payment tool that will enable it.
Final Thoughts
The future looks bright for sports betting, with new states opening up and technology continuing to evolve. But perhaps the industry’s most lasting legacy will be how it transformed payments from a back-office function into a strategic advantage.
As we look forward to supporting the next wave of major sporting events, one thing is clear: The gaming industry’s culture of payment innovation isn’t slowing down. And that’s something worth betting on.
The information provided here is not investment, tax or financial advice. You should consult with a licensed professional for advice concerning your specific situation.
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