Sports Betting Beat: Costa Rica Licenses, US Payment Solutions
These are the top stories for Monday April 12, 2021 (morning edition) in the world of sports betting.
PayNearMe: Driving US Betting Engagement Through Payment Innovation
Online sports betting may be legal in the US, but don't tell that to the banks. Many still decline their issued credit cards on the basis that they were given an unfunded mandate to prohibit transactions for gambling online courtesy of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). And until that law is thrown out, banking institutions will continue to decline cards.
PayNearMe Chief Revenue Officer, Mike Kaplan, believes his firm can get around this obstacle as well as others that plague a market that currently resembles the Wild West. Not all states have embraced legalized sports betting.
“The thing that we have been most known for is the ability to accept cash payment at retail so that kind of was our flagship program when we launched, you know 11 years ago and that’s 27,000 retail locations throughout the US, where somebody could walk in and hand over cash and then have that cash deposited or applied to a bill, or you know, put in their gaming wallet or what have you.
“We have since expanded the platform to include credit, debit, ACH, Apple Pay, Google Pay you know really kind of a full payment service provider providing all of the latest payment methods and channels to service the verticals we’re in.”
Costa Rica Regulator Receives Proposals to Operate Online Gambling
The Social Protection Board (JPS) of Costa Rica says it is analyzing five proposals to obtain authorization to operate online gambling, including electronic lottery and sports betting.
Each operator selected by the JPS will have to pay a deposit of between $100k and $200k to the JPS and another sum of $250k as a guarantee.
Costa Rica has played host to the online gambling sector since the industry first emerged back in the late 1990s. Every few years, it has attempted to institute a licensing process.
One of the first companies to ever pay a licensing fee to the Costa Rican government was Legendz Sports. It immediately relocated to Panama and years later forced to shut down by the US Government.
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
