Industry Insider: Victor Newsom, Senior Vice President, Product Management and Payments Solutions, Everi
In this month’s Industry Insider, we spoke with Victor Newsom, senior vice president of product management and payments solutions, at Everi about what attracted him to the gaming industry, how advancements in digital payments benefit everyone, what Everi is doing to stay at the forefront of the payments environment, and more.
Throughout your 20-plus-year career, with a significant portion spent in the gaming industry, your specialization in financial technologies stands out. What factors initially attracted you to the gaming industry, and what noteworthy transformations have you observed over the years?
Several factors together brought me to the gaming industry – people I knew, timing, the opportunity, and the challenge within the space – all of these aligned and I ended up at Everi (then GCA).
After I had exited one of my companies to GreenDot, the person that took over the processing platform was a former FIS guy and knew Rob Myhre, the CIO at the time for GCA. When I came back from my London startup, a mobile payments company, and was looking around for a new opportunity, he pointed me to GCA.
I reached out to Rob, and he said “Look, there's a lot of opportunity for payments innovation in the gaming sector.” He thought I’d be a good fit and he was right.
I like the idea of transforming things. I saw the challenge of trying to do innovation in a cross-section between gaming regulation and payments regulation. I got really excited about being able to do that in gaming.
And over the years, I've seen the digitization of business and personalized customer journeys create a massive impact. At Everi and in gaming, we talk about the transition to omnichannel – moving analog to the digital neighborhood. We're also in the presence of seeing the convergence of online, land-based, and retail all coming together. I talk about “the rise of the ‘Super App,’” because I think we're starting to see that transformation of the consumer experience go beyond a couple of scripted “new” things and become a whole set of capabilities that rest in the hands of our customers and their patrons.
The rapid expansion and integration of digital wallets and cashless payments in the gaming space, have allowed for the convenience that consumers expect in their daily lives. How will these advancements continue to improve and provide more benefits to bettors, operators, and suppliers?
We're seeing external pressures on convergence, but we're also to the point here that there's been progress. As that matures, you're seeing it in, for example, our Everi CashClub Wallet®, where we are consistently adding more payment and withdrawal methods. Everi is integrating with more systems; not just gaming systems, but also retail and other third parties.
From my position, I’m seeing the maturation of the space itself. These additional options act as a wedge to provide more curated experiences for the patrons. It also creates a dynamic that forces innovation in the rest of the space. For Everi, that includes cashless options on our financial access kiosks, cashless options on traditional ATMs, cashless at the gaming tables, cashless at the slots, etc.
We are working on a whole ecosystem where we allow patrons – even without a loyalty card – to be able to transact across the entire floor and beyond – digitally, just like they do in their regular lives outside of the casino.
At Everi, we’re inventing new products and services on the foundations we’ve built to expand beyond market maturation. This includes acquiring Video King and Venuetize, going beyond the limits of a casino by creating entire customer journeys that take them closer to home, and allowing them to transact where and how they want to but also where it makes sense for our customers and the industry.
If we weren't doing this already, the integration with online and retail segments into land-based gaming would have forced it anyway. This is a very natural process in my view.
In your role at Everi, you are constantly exploring what’s coming next on the payment technologies horizon. What are the top trends you are following with the most interest right now? How is Everi evolving to stay at the forefront of this ever-changing environment?
Seeing where things are headed, in some ways, is the easy part; seeing how you can intersect with the future is the hard part.
Convergence is a very clear, compelling activity. We also see unprecedented change in the broader payments landscape and regulatory landscapes outside our traditional areas taking us beyond payments gaming regulation.
Not only does that kind of have its own “Renaissance” going on right now with digital payments, but also with the Federal Reserve. FedNow, which just launched, is the first innovation at the core banking payment sector in decades – or ever, some would say, and even to new technologies like blockchain and AI. As a payment service provider both in the online and the land-based space, what we need to do at Everi is look at how we bring those innovations forward faster – but without unacceptable risks.
Ultimately, the question is how does that fit into our business and financial models? How do we take all of the knowledge that we've gained over decades and decades of experience and development in systems and people and make sure that these are inserted into this ecosystem in a way that's not only not disruptive or at least minimally disruptive, but also acts as a value accelerator and a force multiplier for the products and services we already provide?
Finally, I would say a trend that is a kind of sleeper for a lot of folks in this position is sovereign identity abilities. This payments landscape and the identity landscape are increasingly going to overlap, so technological innovations there are going to have profound effects on this in the future.
September is the American Gaming Association’s Responsible Gaming Education Month. With that in mind, what challenges do advancements in digital payments pose to responsible gaming? How is Everi working to mitigate them?
In our gaming ecosystem, we’re not only just doing what's required from a regulatory perspective, but also looking at education awareness given our aspirations to be a “Banking as a Service” provider and a FinTech leader. For example, monitoring tools and budgeting tools are parts of the answer to how we're working to mitigate issues.
Working in a previous role, I was part of a team that delivered the first teen card product for Discover and it included financial education lessons for teenagers. In the gaming space, we're obviously dealing with adults, not teenagers, but still want to promote educating everyone about how payments work. That may entail discussing spending habits, providing tools to determine how much they want to spend over a given period, and allowing protections for certain financial instruments.
We take our role in the regulation and education space very seriously. And we continue to provide tools for casino operators and consumers, the patrons directly.
G2E is the catalyst for gaming - fostering innovation and driving growth by convening the global industry to define tomorrow. How is Everi looking to make an impact at G2E 2023?
As always, Everi is going to show our continued commitment to innovation and quality as exemplified by new products, services, and experiences.
We typically don't sit still, so if you saw what we had last year, we'll bring the best of that back to the table. Plus, we certainly have some new, exciting products and services we want to take forward to the market and “beyond the casino.”
I'll leave that teaser there. But, hopefully, you'll come by the booth and see what I'm talking about personally. I hope to see Everibody there!