GMB - What is your assessment of GamersBank's performance and growth in 2023 in general? Was it as expected or did it exceed your expectations?
Paulo Bacelete Gerber - 2023 was a year of consolidating our results (after reaching our break-even in 2022) and expanding our business, with new partnerships and products. Among the various objectives we achieved this year, one of them stands out: we expanded our operation to a total of 13 partners, including 10 iGaming sites and 3 in-person poker tournaments, not to mention several other partners that are in the integration process. And the most important thing is that this expansion is not limited to accepting GamersWallet and GamersBank, but also encompasses our B2B solution that facilitates payments via PIX, GamersPay.
This year, we improved the usability of GamersWallet (for example, we implemented some very important features for poker teams), aligned the visual identity of our products and websites and launched the GamersBank digital bank account.
All this growth and evolution has not caused us to deviate from the path of excellence in customer service, so we have maintained an excellent satisfaction rate with our customer service (always above 92% high satisfaction).
Our team has strengthened a lot this year, both in the quantity and quality of our team, and we are maintaining a culture that is very focused on providing good services, in a relaxed atmosphere, which values learning, cooperation and respect between people, values we truly believe in.
What is your assessment of GamersBank's performance and growth in the Brazilian market in 2023?
We had a very positive performance of all our products in 2023, mainly GamersWallet, which satisfactorily served more than 30 Brazilian poker teams and more than 60 thousand customers; which further consolidated us as the main payment method for regular poker players in Brazil.
Regarding GamersBank (digital account), we launched the product at the beginning of Q2 and optimized it throughout the rest of the year, taking advantage of the various opportunities for evolution that we detected in this period.
Our PIX facilitation operation is already serving 7 partners in the iGaming segment and we are in the final phase of implementing several others.
In other words, we had a year of consolidating results, growing partnerships/clients and volume of transactions, with the evolution of functionalities and benefits delivered by our products, and all of this while maintaining high levels of performance in terms of service quality and operation stability. We are ready for even bigger steps in 2024.
Could you list the main achievements or objectives achieved?
* Expansion of operations to a total of 13 partners across websites and in-person events;
* Start of our operations in the sports betting segment and other skill games;
* Implementation of our eFX services for payments via PIX (GamersPay) for a total of 7 partners;
* Closing of another 10 partnerships that are in the final phase of integration;
* Acquisition of more than 30 thousand new accounts from regular poker players in the GamersWallet product;
* Launch of GamersBank, a complete digital account that replaced GamersCard with many more features;
* Migration of more than 100 thousand customers from the GamersCard customer base to GamersBank and GamersWallet products;
* Consolidation of our status as a break-even company with the subsequent strong and consistent growth of our results, strengthening us even further for our next steps.
In your sector, what themes or technological advances do you think will dominate the market in 2024? What will be the future trends?
PIX will certainly continue its trajectory of expanding functionalities and Open Banking should begin to gain relevance and utility in the iGaming segment with the advent of sports betting regulation, as this is a movement very well-orchestrated by the Central Bank which, we believe, should also have positive impacts on our segment, increasingly facilitating the usability of platforms.
In parallel to this, the intensification of security methods such as two-factor authentication, biometrics and new features are expected to promote even greater security for users.
Finally, due to the constant evolution (unfortunately) of criminal practices in our segments (financial and iGaming) and the risk that such practices represent for the entire financial system and also for games, we believe that technology will continue to bring useful and important so that serious players in our market can intensify their safety and regulatory compliance procedures, always seeking to cause the least possible impact on consumers.
What is your general opinion about the regulation of the sports betting and online gaming market in Brazil?
It is true, however, that it is better for the process to continue and for us to have a quality result, than to publish ineffective regulations that lack commercial and economic sense.
We also hope that the bill that will allow the commercial offering and exploitation of gambling activities in Brazil will be optimized and approved, especially those that take place in person (casinos, bingos and turf), but also the already old and "resilient" jogo do bicho.
Brazil needs to evolve towards collective awareness that the prohibition of certain activities only strengthens wrongdoing, crime and injustice; recognize - in this case - that the human being is playful in essence and turn these commercial practices - currently clandestine - into formal activities and with an even wider spectrum of functionalities (after all, we cannot forget that casinos have enormous potential to promote tourism, sport and the arts in general).
This can bring great benefits to Brazilians, including (or even especially) those who suffer from disorders such as gambling disease. Prohibiting does not prevent the existence of all this, nor does it cure these problems; regulating and controlling, in fact, brings unequivocal benefits to everyone.
What are GamersBank's main goals/objectives for 2024 in the Brazilian market and on a global level?
We have bold goals and we believe that there are so many opportunities that it will be difficult to choose the most relevant and urgent focuses. After all, there are huge avenues of action that can be better explored locally and these will certainly be on our mandatory agenda. Among them, we can highlight:
* Offering of payment services to all iGaming segments authorized to operate in Brazil, which in itself already represents a fantastic growth opportunity;
* Expansion of the offer of these same payment services to players that offer in-person gaming; and
* Offering of banking services to the public we already serve today and even with the possibility of taking a new approach to the eSports public.
At the international level, we can say that for the first time we are considering this possibility of action as something much closer and more possible, even though the Brazilian market alone continues to offer itself as a giant that still has enormous potential for exploitation.
Source: GMB Exclusive
