Annie Osborne: “We focus on secure and expedient experience underpinned by resilience”

Annie Osborne is amongst the latest additions to Freemarket, a company that focuses on providing business in the gaming & gambling sector with cross-border payment capabilities. In our conversation with Osborne, we find out more about the company's mission statement and how Freemarket has made a point of working with what it has called the underserviced gaming & gambling sectors. A well-seasoned veteran in payments herself, Osborne walks us through Freemarket's intriguing ecosystem.

Q: Annie, you have recently joined Freemarket as the company's Business Development Director. How does it make you feel to become a part of this new team and bring your extensive experience in payments?

Freemarket is a great company. I’ve known about them for quite some time, and I’ve been consistently impressed by their solutions and product offerings in the cross-border payments and FX space, it’s no wonder they have such a good reputation within our industry. Our cross-border and FX solutions are very well suited to a variety of business types, particularly the gaming industry which is where most of my expertise lies. Their banking and NBFI network is perhaps what’s most appealing to the gaming and gambling industry as it ensures resilience and secures bank redundancy.

Q: You will be tasked with helping Freemarket deliver stronger value to the online gaming and gambling industries. What do you think should be the company's next move to establish itself firmly in these verticals?

A significant number of well-known gaming & gambling companies are already existing clients of ours and it’s now time to further educate and promote the value and resilience of our solution to an even wider audience, as we have barely scratched the surface – I’m very excited to see where the team and I will take this.

Q: How is the industry changing and responding to the arrival of payment specialists such as Freemarket already, based on your experience in similar positions?

Freemarket offers an exceptional and reliable solution, a scalable platform, best-in-class compliance and risk services such as transaction monitoring, and a superior customer service and experience model. We have a strong banking and NBFI network, real-time FX pricing and rates and pride ourselves in simplifying the complex process of international payments and FX. We do exactly what we say we’ll do and that’s what makes us stand out in this industry. It’s truly rewarding to be working for a business that puts customers’ needs at the centre of everything they do.

Q: What do you think that payment providers should still do to better tailor their offers to the surging demand for payment convenience when it comes to gambling?

I think it has to be around the onboarding of new customers. I’ve been so impressed with the lengths Freemarket is taking to ensure the onboarding process is easy, expedited and concierge. Our specialist compliance, sales, customer service and relationship management teams are well-versed in supporting SMEs who struggle to access banking and payment services, and they truly understand the challenges that gaming and gambling-related businesses face with high street and mainstream banking. Our risk appetite is ever-evolving with up-to-the-minute regulation and legislation tracking and updates globally, we’re always looking for ways to work with consistently underserviced gaming and gambling companies.

Q: What is the Freemarket factor do you think - the feature that will help you distinguish the company's products in an already heavily contested space?

A lot of payments companies talk about a single API integration, which we offer too, but most of our customers use just our dashboard without the need for a complicated technical integration.

With Freemarket speed, security, simplicity and transparency are key but it’s ensuring it’s underpinned by resilience and superior service that truly distinguishes us in the payments technology space for cross-border payments and FX.

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