One of the most crucial building blocks of the Internet was its ability to offer secure and rapid transactions. It didn’t matter if you were looking to do a spot of online shopping, play casino games, purchase tickets for a concert, or something else, the main hurdle the Internet faced in the 1990s revolved around its ability to expedite payments.
For a platform that could bring conventional ideas into a 21st-century market and ensure withdrawals and deposits were just as quick on a digital interface as they were in a physical one, the rewards were enormous. Therefore, this became the top priority for those in fintech and those running large corporations.
How casino gaming broke new ground
Although online merchants deal with online payments and occasional reimbursements, there was no other market like casino gaming when it came to handling such rapid-fire payment requests. At any given time, an online casino must handle hundreds of different withdrawal and deposit requests. For those brands that could master this, they were able to quickly rise to the top of this new form of gambling.
Not all brands that emerged during this period were able to maintain their grip at the top of the industry, as speed wasn’t the only factor, there was also a growing emphasis on various online casino deposit methods. Therefore, those casinos that could offer real-time deposits—as well as a variation that covered traditional methods such as bank transfers, along with new payment options like e-wallets like PayPal and Neteller—were attracting vast numbers of customers from dozens of different countries.
We’re talking quite generically here, of course, there were plenty of companies that tried to jump in on this growing trend and were not up to standard. Other casino companies that found success were some of the biggest conventional names who used their presence in the land-based realm to bankroll a move online.
Given that they already had many deep-rooted connections with conventional payment providers, it made it easier for companies of this stature to move online. The rise and success of real-time deposits on online platforms, at least in part, can be traced directly back to the early days of online casino gaming.
Why are real-time deposits so important?
It’s all about customer perception and user experience. In today’s market, where we are able to do everything via our smartphones, we need the technology to be as instant, convenient, and speedy as possible.
We access everything through our phones, whether it’s the remarkable success of podcasts on YouTube, which we can stream through the app on our phones on the move, or Apple or Google Pay, which allow us to use our watch or smartphone as a contactless payment method., within seconds, we can tap and go, leaving the days of the chip-and-PIN terminal behind.
Ultimately, our society is now engineered to ensure we can do things as quickly as possible, so real-time deposits are no different. If we examine the example of casino gaming again, the market has become so saturated and profitable that small nuances, such as the speed of deposits, can be the only determining factor that results in new customers seeking out their service. While it might seem like a small detail, over the course of a year or two, this can yield profits in the millions of dollars—it’s big business.
A changing dynamic
It’s not just traditional payment options that are part of a changing dynamic; by gravitating towards digital-dominant forms of payment, this has paved the way for cryptocurrency and blockchain payments, which many believe are the latest and quickest way for deposits to operate online.
Of the many advances that cryptocurrency and blockchain bring into the world of fintech, the fact it can guarantee security on the blockchain, with an immutable ledger of all transactions that take place, and essentially eradicate all cross-border fees that have long been an issue for companies that operate internationally online, is the driving advantage.
Not only have traditional payment options been able to develop their platforms and bring them up to speed with more contemporary payment options, such as PayPal, but in instances like Apple Pay, they’ve been able to fuse conventional ideas, like VISA payment cards, with e-wallet concepts.
These options have proven to be an enormous hit, with Apple Pay now boasting hundreds of millions of users. Despite some issues with monopoly laws that they have fallen foul of in Europe, this hasn’t stopped the mass adoption worldwide, and it has caused an enormous shift in the number of people now using their smartphones as contactless payment systems, both online and in-person.
The future of real-time deposits
Now that numerous payment options can essentially guarantee instant deposits, the focus has shifted to new ideas, such as cryptocurrency and blockchain. Granted, a much larger level of adoption will be needed before we see online platforms investing vast resources in strengthening their blockchain and cryptocurrency payment options.
However, suppose the current environment is anything to go by, and the rise of cryptocurrency in traditional financial circles continues to generate such noise. In that case, online platforms will undoubtedly pay more attention, as customer behavior dictates the true underlying value in any market.
We’re already seeing this with cryptocurrency casinos, but until the big retailers truly get behind the idea of permitting cryptocurrency payments, they’ll hit a ceiling, for now anyway.
Final say
Online platforms can point to several factors that have helped expedite the rise and speed of real-time deposits. If we were to point to one industry that has been the primary catalyst in turning this growth into a reality, it would be the casino gaming industry.
In many ways, this industry was a perfect experimental ground, as there are few other industries and products where users are making such quick-fire withdrawals and deposits, and, crucially, where the deposit speed actually makes a difference.
Fintech companies have spent considerable time streamlining this process. Still, the growing potential of the online casino gaming market, the massive surge in people using these platforms, and the importance of getting real-time deposits correct all mean that the industry is the foundation for the fintech innovations we take for granted in today’s market.
