There are many layers to the operation of an online casino, as a working platform is the sum of all of its parts. This includes everything from the security that glues things together to game fairness, the selection of games, and a high-quality variety of payment options.
One of the areas of online casino platforms that is investigated the most by users is withdrawals. When players have a positive cash balance sitting in their account, there naturally comes a point when they will want to get their hands on it. But the cash-out process at online casinos can be extremely varied and sometimes quite slow.
This can be a huge point of frustration for players because any barrier to getting their hands on their own money feels like an unnecessary annoyance. It has led to a surge in people seeking out fast withdrawal casinos in UK regions to try and overcome this problem.
Finding online casinos that meet that specific criterion can be a tricky task to undertake. A player doesn’t want to have to keep signing up for different sites just to try and figure out which one they can get the quickest payouts from. A good recommendation, therefore, is to use online review sites that perform exploratory work on different platforms and report back details about withdrawal options, minimums, maximums, and importantly, speed.
Speeding up the process
The biggest drive in modern fintech solutions for the online casino world is based around speed. Customers who make a withdrawal, for example, want their money to reach them as quickly and as efficiently as possible. There have been significant recent improvements in this area, with one of them being Open Baking, which allows fintech to gain access to bank account data (with explicit permission).
Part of the Open Banking systems are account-to-account payment options, which are a separate path from card networks. When a player is ready to make a withdrawal from their online casino account, the request is made and then, through access to the Open Banking API, the money can make its way directly into the bank account of the player.
The difference here is that Open Banking bypasses traditional banking methods, which are highly secure, of course, but slow because of all the many checks and balances and regulated systems that they go through. Open Banking is still highly secure, but it just allows money to move through a much more efficient channel.
The security question
As soon as the groundbreaking e-wallets arrived on the scene, people naturally started questioning their security. After all, this was something very new, breaking the traditional mould of banking. Fintech companies put a lot of necessary stock into security, and for relevance in the world of online casinos, Know Your Customer checks verify that a player’s details are legitimate, for example, as this helps in the fight against money laundering.
Because players can permit fintech innovations to communicate with their personal bank account, security takes on new levels through things like multi-factor authentication, where a transaction has to be verified by a text or through a banking app.
Throw into the mix biometric authentication options, and it’s not just strong security options, but quick ones. This is why the process of casino withdrawals has improved in speed—because fintech has cohesively helped decrease the time the approval process takes.
Does AI enter the picture?
A lot of AI has entered the world of fintech, and again, security is one of the major areas of focus for the deployment of AI. It can rapidly improve the verification checks on things like ID and allow for greater accuracy in biometric checks. For someone opening an online casino account, this means that they can get their account verified more quickly. Without full verification on an account, withdrawals cannot happen.
AI’s processing power can analyse incredible volumes of transactional data in real-time, and can be set to work looking for patterns that could be red-flagged as fraud. While this is naturally a big layer of protection for casino operators, it is also hugely beneficial for players, because with AI accurately marking transactions as low risk, it lets legitimate payments run through the system quickly.
Cryptocurrency
This is still very much a grey area in online gambling as crypto is not a registered currency, so it’s not available for use at licensed platforms that are under the umbrella of a regulatory body like the UK Gambling Commission.
But the much-varied world of cryptocurrency has started to make its way into some gambling platforms in other regions across the world, and even dedicated crypto casinos have popped up. This is all on the back of the remarkable fintech that is the blockchain.
People like decentralised crypto because it takes traditional banking right out of the loop, and it’s extremely fast and secure to use. Its relevance as of now at online casinos is nowhere near that of fiat currencies, and it could stay this way for a fair while because crypto coins are unregulated.
Where cryptocurrency would hope to strongarm its way into usage would be by offering a blockchain-based secure universal wallet. This would be one digital wallet specifically for gambling that could be used at multiple casinos to reduce friction in payments and withdrawals from different sources.
It would also cut out any hindrance surrounding currency conversions, and potentially trim back on the Know Your Customer checks.
Fintech helps the online casino experience
Having high-quality fintech involved is a big advantage for online casinos, as it cuts down on customer service enquiries from disgruntled account holders who are wondering why certain processes are taking so long. Fintech can also really help gamblers during their playing experiences.
By checking on transactions and assessing behavioural patterns made from a bank to a casino, for example, technology could give players nudges if it thought the player may be sliding into trouble with increasingly rash deposit amounts at strange hours, for example.
Automated interventions, like suggestions of a break or a pause on transactions, could help with risk management and promote better financial health. This would all stem from fintech APIs having access to bank accounts through Open Banking.
The importance of fintech
With fintech innovations at the heart of the online casino experience’s financial perspective, it streamlines everything, boosting the speed and efficiency of payments. There’s been a tremendous amount of innovation in the last decade regarding e-wallets, AI, and Open Banking, which has added up to something substantial and convenient for online gamblers.
