There has been word on the street for some time now that cashless gambling will be the new standard for domestic casino operations. Recently, state and tribal gambling revenues have tanked due to COVID-19; the demand for cashless gaming has increased.
This summer, the American Gaming Association (AGA) formally endorsed cashless gaming. Popular casino management systems are currently competing with trial cashless gaming operations across the country.
One California tribal casino, the Morongo Casino, Resort & Spa in Cabezon, released a statement with plans to introduce cashless gaming options for slot and video poker machines. This will be the first, likely of many US tribal casino operators to adopt such systems.
This may seem like a small step, but industry insiders predict that the introduction of cashless gaming will be a watershed moment for gambling operators in the US. Soon, state and tribal-regulated casinos may fully transition to virtual payment methods.
And a new payment method the domestic casinos are testing out has been the industry standard for legal offshore online casinos, cryptocurrency. Technologies like Bitcoin SV offer gambling operators reduced transaction fees but also can provide lucrative data insights. Recently, the CoinGeek conference featured a panel on cashless gaming.
So domestic operators around the country are trialing these “new” technologies. However, online casino players, including California online gamblers, already know that the industry-leading online casinos have offered multiple crypto banking options, including person2person transfer services, for many years now.
International online casinos may still be the better option for Californian gamblers. US gambling laws have been continuously a hodgepodge of ambiguous legislation, originally meant to target the mafia’s sports betting crime organization, but now used to target perfectly legal operators. Luckily, international online casinos don’t fall victim to aggressive US policy restrictions.
This is a big plus for both amateur and professional gamblers, who, for the majority, have taken their business to offshore betting sites. A recent report by the Action Network compared the gross gaming revenue from legal US gambler operators to legal non-US regulated offshore operators. State sportsbooks brought in $1.4 billion, while online casinos and sportsbooks raked in $18 billion.
The mobile, virtual, and cashless gaming markets provide a massive opportunity for the US to create a legal, extremely profitable gambling market. This move would place extreme pressure on offshore sites to regulate their businesses under US licensing, which would probably skew moneylines to account for new taxation and standardized limits on the action.
For now, we wait and see how it plays out.
Sources:
Action Network
CalvinAyre.com