Sean Mackay: "Crypto transactions will become normal, but not take over"

Sean Mackay was one of the people we caught up with during the SBC Summit Barcelona 2023 in September. As Chief Executive Officer at CoinPayments, Mackay is well-versed in the current landscape for cryptocurrency gambling and how consumers are responding to this emerging technology and payment gateway. He goes into detail to explain how CoinPayments offers a familiar way to access the innovative payment method that defies centralization.

Q: Sean, it’s good to have you here with Casino Guru News. Our first question has to do with what CoinPayments is and how your company fits in the rapidly-evolving landscape of the gambling industry?

CoinPayments is a crypto payment gateway and also a custodial wallet for over 150 different coins on the payment gateway side and over 2,000 coins and tokens on the wallet side. We think crypto in general is a great way for taking deposits from players by operators. By nature, it’s borderless and there is less friction, no banks to deal with.

Q: This all sounds very exciting! Why do you think there are more operators turning to CoinPayments and cryptocurrency payment methods?

The borderless nature of crypto transactions in their essence is like sending an email – it doesn’t matter which provider you use, which card I have, what region you are in, what region I am in. Additionally, there are no chargebacks. Once the crypto is received it’s settled. There is also the ease of moving crypto around, as it’s much easier to carry out payments in crypto than it is with traditional banking methods, especially with high-risk businesses.

Q: Given how easy it is to carry such payments - have you noticed a steady increase in the number of people who prefer to utilize cryptocurrency gateways in the gambling industry?

Yes, it’s not just steady, it’s quite an exponential increase over the years. Back when we first started looking at the gaming space five years ago, we had to start by educating people what is crypto, why it’s a good option to accept, and then we moved on to what is CoinPayments and why you should use our platform to accept crypto.

Now, everyone knows what cryptocurrency is. There are dozens, probably hundreds of payment providers out there that support crypto payments. Now, we skip the whole first part of what is crypto, and we move directly to why CoinPayments. There has been a huge increase in the number of operators and platforms that want crypto payments as an option.

Q: Do you think CoinPayments contributes to this particular vertical in a way that others simply cannot?

A lot of the new crypto payment providers barely have a year under their belt. There is the recent hack of one of the biggest providers out there, which has caused a lot of concern. It’s just good reassurance to have a long-term company like CoinPayments. We are here to stay; we are not just a fly-by-night business.

I think our history and our foundation are certainly things that set us apart. Our low fees are another factor. We are also a crypto-first platform. In the beginning we only dealt with crypto and no fiat currencies whatsoever so our whole product is designed around putting crypto payments first to improve the experience for the player and the operator.

Recently, we have started working with fiat on and off ramp partners, as this is usually the first question that we get when we talk to operators and platforms.

Q: Mentioning on and off-ramps, do you reckon digital transactions utilizing cryptocurrencies are going to become the norm or are they more likely to "normalize" and become one of the available options rather?

It depends on what type of time horizon we are talking about here, but generally speaking I’d say these types of transactions will end up being normalized rather than taking over completely. There will always be a place for traditional payments, such as credit cards and bank transfers.

That is never going to go away. However, as time goes on and people get exposed to crypto and they give crypto payments a try, they are going to see just how easy it is and that is going to drive adoption.

We see this first-hand, as we are a payment gateway and wallet, not an exchange. We don’t deal with trading volumes, which are more based on speculation. Rather, we deal with actual payment and deposit volumes which is real world usage and adoption of crypto by transacting value. We have seen over the years that the volumes have been growing, the number of users has been growing and in general the data all points to crypto deposits and payments becoming normalized.

Q: How do you think the digital payment ecosystem in the gambling industry can improve?

Speaking to various clients and people in the space, I think the current digital payment ecosystem in the industry is very fragmented.

Many operators will be limited to what payments methods they can accept or what payment methods they can use, depending on the platform that they have integrated.

Many players will also be limited to specific payment options based on what wallet they are using and what payment options their operator accepts.

This is the case in a lot of industries, especially those categorized as high risk, but I think gaming has done a great job of supporting as many payment options as they can – in both the wallets for the players and the cashiers – for the platforms and operators.

Because cryptocurrency payments don’t have to rely on a central entity, by nature they are like transacting in gold, but digitally. No central entity dictates rules, censors accounts or prints new supply at will. At the base level, you can even transact cryptocurrency peer to peer, rather than going through a centralized entity like a bank.

Q: Speaking of challenges, what do you think are the main problems that CoinPayments help resolve through its platform?

We have always been a crypto-first platform. As a result of that we have tried to focus on taking this relatively complicated technology and simplifying the user experience. Crypto transactions can be scary in that if you lose your password – your crypto is gone forever. If you send it to the wrong address, it’s not retrievable.

That’s a bit intimidating for a lot of people to get into crypto but CoinPayments is trying to make it easy for people to get into crypto in ways that are already familiar to them.

You log into CoinPayments account with a username and password. We try to make the interface and the transactions relatable so that users understand as much as possible – we try to simplify the experience.

Q: Do you believe more operators and customers would continue to explore crypto payments as viable and worthwhile alternatives to what currently exists?

Yes, as mentioned we have seen quite a bit of growth over the years. Crypto itself is a very unique payment method and if people and platforms haven’t discovered it yet, they certainly will soon.

Q: Okay, and now that we have more operators and players – what do you think the future of gambling payments will be in five years, and can you make a prediction about how this dynamic landscape would have changed over the next years?

Well, crypto payments will be subject to change brought on by regulation – there are different regulations changing all the time in different regions and I think where things might go over the year, would in a more decentralized direction. It would be a shift back to its roots - to the original intention of cryptocurrencies.

Right now, there are many companies – like us – that are making this experience more centralized and taking over the liability of protecting private keys. But in the future, as people become more confident, they will move to a decentralized model, and they will transact directly through the blockchain rather than through one of the payment gateways.

Q: What is next for CoinPayments in 2023 and beyond?

Right now, we have a brand-new platform that we finished building. It’s currently undergoing a security audit. This platform is going to be faster, more secure, and more scalable. It will have a lot of features that have been missing for a long time that clients have been interested in. We will be releasing this platform by December 2023, then we will start the onboarding process.

We are also always exploring more partnerships, providers, and operators – specifically on-ramp and off-ramp providers, because that is the number one request from clients in the gaming space and banking relationships are constantly changing.

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