GMB - What is your assessment of GamersBank's performance and growth in 2022? Was it what you expected or did it exceed expectations?
Paulo Gerber - GamersBank grew a lot throughout 2022. It was a year of maturation for our GamersWallet product. We tripled – yes, we tripled! - our customer base, as well as the financial volume transacted with our products. These are fantastic results by themselves. It is important to emphasize that this growth took place on a base that was already quite robust at the end of 2021. In other words, we have no right to complain about anything with regard to our results in 2022, do you agree?
Could you list the main accomplishments or goals achieved?
We achieved several important goals during this year.
We grew our customer and transaction base significantly, as described above; we expanded the functionality of our product, particularly those aimed at poker teams, with which we have very important and successful partnerships; we closed 3 new partnerships with major iGaming sites, which are in the final stage of integration; we participated throughout the year in the BSOP series of tournaments (the largest and most important series of face-to-face tournaments in Latin America), continuously expanding the use of GamersWallet to carry out buy-ins in these tournaments throughout this period and greatly strengthening the recall of our brand with a very special public; we continue with an excellent rate of customer satisfaction with our customer service (always above 92% of high satisfaction); and, finally, we achieved an extremely important goal for any business: we surpassed the break-even line of financial results for our operation.
In your sector within the industry, what topics or technological advances do you think will dominate the market in 2023? What will be the future trends?
The means of payment and financial/banking services industries continue to evolve in terms of technology and new added services.
The PIX, which in recent years was possibly the most important and impactful event in this market, continues its trajectory of expansion of functionalities. This will certainly be one of the great innovation fronts in this segment.
Speaking specifically of technologies, contactless payments, both via card and via smartphones (and other existing or under development devices), will continue to gain consumer preference. Contactless cards already represent a huge volume on the market and, soon, cards without this technology will already be obsolete. The adoption of smartphones for this purpose is still evolving, but it tends to continue to grow and at an ever-increasing pace.
With regard to security, for customers and players in this market, biometrics is advancing very strongly and still has a huge field to evolve. Finally, there is no lack of technological innovations in our industry.
Have you noticed that the Brazilian gaming market has evolved this year, or has it missed another opportunity? What do you see about the regulation in the country for 2023?
It may seem like a strange answer, but I would say that both alternatives are true for the first question. It evolved too much because of the private market players, who spared no efforts to expand their operations and services. In addition, we observe the emergence of several new players, especially in sports betting. On the other hand, we lost two great opportunities: the regulation of sports betting and the continuity of the discussion and approval of Bill 442, which deals with the release of the exploitation of casino games, bingos and jogo do bicho. The country and all players in this market lost the opportunity to advance further and allow this industry to create a relevant number of jobs, services, entertainment, security and taxes for the country.
We hope that in 2023 the new Government will resume the development and publication of the Presidential Decree that will regulate the sports betting market and that the new congressmen will resume the discussion and approval of Bill 442.
What are GamersBank's main goals/objectives for 2023?
GamersBank will be launched as a digital account in the first months of 2023. The functionalities and services available to our customers will already be expanded with the launch of the product and it will continue to offer innovations throughout the year.
We have several partnerships with new sites in the final stages of negotiation and many more will certainly come. Expansion of the acceptance network for our products is one of our major focuses for this coming year.
Another important focus is face-to-face poker. We must continue as a very important and relevant means of payment for large face-to-face tournaments, as it already happened in 2022, and we will expand to poker clubs throughout this year.
In 2022, we created our payment facilitation service via PIX (GamersPay), which will already be used at the beginning of the year by partners who are in the final stages of implementation and we intend to greatly expand the base of partners served throughout 2023.
Anyway, there will be no shortage of news!
Source: Exclusive GMB
