Winstar trialing cashless gambling at their brick and mortar site

Jon Pill
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Posted on: December 6, 2020 5:37 pm EST

Winstar Resort and Casino are trialing a cash-free system at their brick and mortar property. Powered by Everi, the Winstar Wallet will allow players to play electronic games on-site. They can do this without having to risk handling cash or interacting with cashiers.

For this trial period, the Winstar Wallet will only allow purchases with “electronic gameplay.” This suggests that you will still have to purchase your poker chips the old fashioned way if you want to play a few hands. But if the Winstar Wallet proves successful, it wouldn’t take much additional infrastructure to expand it to allow chip purchases.

This is already a big jump forward. The enormous Winstar site, perched on the Oklahoma/Texas border, has 8.5k electronic machines throughout its facilities. Bringing the 57 poker tables and 100 or so other gambling tables up to code should be a breeze after retrofitting that many slot machines.

“Creating a digital, cashless customer experience has been a focus of ours for some time,” Jack Parkinson, the general manager of WinStar World Casino and Resort, said.

Parkinson added a plug for the software whizzes behind the upgrade. “Throughout our review of various solutions, it was clear Everi’s CashClub Wallet met all of our goals. WinStar Wallet will give our patrons a safe, secure, and convenient way to game with us which further enhances their gaming experience.”

Like living in the future

The Winstar Wallet is a phone app, that will allow players to move money to and from their bank accounts, credit cards, and debit cards easily. The idea will be that players load up the app with cash. They can then scan their phones as they would with Apple pay or similar.

The app processes cashouts in the same simple manner.

This development follows the long wished for move from a physical fiat to a digital one. And the pandemic has reminded us all of just how many unwashed hands touch our cash. It’s an idea whose time has come. Everi has found itself neatly situated in the market.

This deal is a big coup for Everi too. Everi is a financial services firm, and has spent much of the pandemic advertising their work on cashless solutions like this one. If it pans out, Winstar will give them an excellent proof-of-concept to point to.

“We are delighted to have such a great partner in WinStar World Casino and Resort to support the first launch of our CashClub Wallet cashless technology,” said Darren Simmons, the EVP and fintech business leader for Everi.

They’ll be hoping the rest of the casino industry follows suit.

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