Earlier in the month, we published a snippet of our interview with Jens Bader, the CEO of MuchBetter, as he discussed the evolving relationship between technology and the payments sector. 

The interview came as MuchBetter unveiled the launch of its unique payments service, which Bader emphasised was a moment that came off the back of a lot of investment and hard work. 

He said: “Last year, we invested a lot into our product and into building new features for our product, a big theme for us has been customer engagement. So what we have recently launched is a feature called Cash Duster, which allows operators to place promotions within just 10 minutes inside our payment app. 

“It’s very interactive and allows operators to reach out to customers and showcase their promotions. It’s all time sensitive so it’s a very meaningful way for operators to reach customers in a timely fashion.”

Further affirming the importance of the integration of promotions as a tool for maximising customer engagement, he continued: “Promotions are very important, we have seen PayPal for example recently acquired Honey. It’s all about stickiness, hence the name Honey. They build customer engagement features, I think this year, for operators to grow in the market and grow their market share, they will have to work with payment partners in a more strategic way.

“Payment companies and operators working together can be a key feature this year, in terms of how we build loyalty and increase stickiness between customers and brands. MuchBetter Cash also builds on the seamless integration. 

“It allows customers to use real cash conveniently make a payment, not necessarily to make a payment, which they can do anyway, but this transaction clears immediately with the gaming operator anyway which means the cash goes straight into their gaming account.”

Underlining how innovation within the payments and gaming relationship can transcend to other industries, he highlighted the importance of convenience: “I believe what drives people, willingly or unwillingly, is convenience. People always look for the easiest way to do things.

“People are addicted and dependent on their mobiles, so building convenience onto the mobile journey is very important. I believe you see this in many areas, for instance how Uber came to the market and how easy it makes it to order and pay for a ride. When you get geolocated, you order your taxi and you pay all within on tap. 

“We have seen this level of convenience across other industries. It’s the same in gaming, people like convenience. If there is an easier way of doing things, people will opt for that.”

When questioned on what implications this could have for safety and security, he added: “Wherever there is convenience, that usually means there is a trade off against safety and security. If you cut down certain processes that means you are eliminating some elements which are important to keep you safe and secure.

“There is technology that comes in like biometric authentication or voice identification for example. I believe with technology we can still reduce customer journeys, making it more convenient, but also maintain the same levels of safety and security.”

Bader also detailed the role that 5G can play when it comes to both enhancing security and generally evolving the payments sector. He said: “It’s still early days, there is a lot of talk about it, but we will see what it actually does. The idea is that 5G will make the customer journey and the experience more exciting. Things will move quicker, the data will not only be more reliable but also more stable. 

“It will allow operators in other industries to feature new content that they previously weren’t able to because of restrictions on bandwidth and how things move in terms of quickness. I believe for gaming, it means more real time, more features, more content and it may actually increase the global nature of offerings.

“I think it is an interesting prospect, we could also see customer authentication in real time which would eradicate the process that can take around two or three minutes. There are some interesting potential uses, we are not there yet, so I am just watching it to see where it goes.”

He went on to reveal his belief that Brexit will be a significant hindrance to London maintaining its status as the financial capital of Europe. 

He commented: “In my personal opinion and I feel very strongly about it, is that I regret the UK’s decision to depart the European Union and I feel it will have a negative impact, we already experience it and the disruptions it has caused to our business. 

“We needed to see how we could continue to operate within the other European countries based on our UK licence, so we basically had to opt for another secondary licence in another European country. This has meant that we have needed to rebuild our licence in another country outside the UK. So we are building jobs there, jobs that we no longer have in the UK.”