Sebastián Salazar CEO of Prontopaga began his presentation by giving a little history about the world of payments and explained its historical development from the times of barter to the rise of cryptocurrencies today

Then, he continued explaining that “The countries that still continue to use high cash rates are Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, but this is changing every year, therefore we have the role of those of us who are experts in fintech and payments, being able “make available to you, the operators, the best methods that are being used in each particular market.”

Immediacy in payments

As the central theme of his presentation, Salazar highlighted the importance of the speed of payments in current times, highlighting that “Prontopaga is transparent to the customer. The client wants to know that their money that is in the casino's checking account is safe and that if they need it they will have it quickly. You know what it costs for clients to win and it turns out that when they win they cannot have their money in their checking account until the next day or longer in some markets. That's terrible. They have to have clients accustomed to immediacy. If the company that provides me with payments is not able to pay my client in 20 minutes, it is of no use to me. Demand it. In several countries we pay in real time. The client always deserves more, he spends a lot with you and usually loses, so when he wins we don't make it difficult for him to take the money home. If in the end you are going to deposit it the same the next day”

The internal differences

“Each particular Latin American market works differently and even in Peru we see differences between what happens in Lima versus what happens outside of Lima where we continue to have high participation rates of cash payment methods and within Lima we have a high rate of channeling through digital payments In Peru in particular, the channeling of physical payments has decreased by half AND the participation of digital wallets has had exponential increases year after year. The participation of wallets has meant such a high level of digitalization that it is generating that only 54% of Peruvian citizens have wallets, use them every day and are, at least for the gambling sector, one of the methods of preferred payment, concentrating around 24% of total transactions, okay? These are very important numbers to understand because they are mobile numbers, they are not static numbers. This is also going to change for next year and it will surely change for the next as well,” Salazar highlighted.

The Prontopaga philosophy

Then the CEO of ProntoPaga remarked “in our philosophy, we do not want to be providers of services for gambling, we are partners of gambling operation companies. And why is this philosophical view regarding the service we provide different? Because we understand that when you make a marketing investment, customer service training, when you have a team that tries to show the content, whether in sports, in the casino vertical, in the slots vertical, and you make every effort to attract that attraction and retain those people, and it turns out that at checkout the customer cannot make a payment because the payment method is having a latency, you lose all the previous work.” And he highlighted “We cannot be a simple service provider. The logic has always been, many times, I charge you the same even if the transaction is not completed. Those types of things that are perverse incentives, and that cause business visions to not be aligned, have to end. And this is where they come in, and this is the interesting thing, what is happening in general in the Latin American industry, this is where the change of vision comes in, which certain actors have incorporated, for those who have international operations surely talking about PIX is not nothing new, in Brazil, which was a revolution. They had credit cards charging them 4.5% for processing payments, plus the payment processor later went and charged them another additional percentage for withdrawals.”

Regulation in Peru

On this point, Salazar remarked “The regulation is good in Peru in the Latin American context, think that I am Chilean, so my self-criticism for the regulation that is being processed in my country is logical, it is very bad. But you have a great local regulation, which must be incorporated, it must be inserted into the mindset of the decision maker and the different participants. The banks are big participants in this system, also the cards, also the wallets, but we have to make them understand the business.”

Safe and clean money .

Then the CEO of Prontopaga emphasized that ."The money that we move in the industry, and we have to be super emphatic and confident to say it and explain it, we have to do it every day, it is safe money that is banked, it is not money that comes from fishing, cash, because even, and here comes a bias that is also a little wrong,explain it quite well, that even cash, when paid in whatever store, that money It is already digitized, therefore I already have a record of who paid, with what account, how much is being spent and where it is being spent. So there is a lot of what we tolerate at the level of communications, which has more to do with fallacies, with constructions that have been made from part of films, which is what gives us a little bit of visibility to the industry, but in The bottom line is that we have to make the right descent and that is to put on, so to speak, long pants because we are an industry regulated and that deep down we are not playing with money, these are companies that have margins, the margins are declared, taxes are paid, that is the regulated industry, this is changing, and this regulatory wave I believe is going to be very exciting for the next five years, why? Because basically we saw how Colombia regulated the online, 2016-2017, if I remember correctly, and now we see how the provinces in Argentina regulated, Peru regulated, the Brazilian giant regulated, Mexico has a special regulation, everyone knows, but at the same time At least you have permissions, okay? And Chile should regulate, Ecuador also changed the daily regulatory situation, despite the fact that they issue us licenses in Ecuador, the tax aspect is regulated, which comes into effect in theory on July 1, and advertising is also regulated, so when we are speaking of markets where the Ecuadorian State in this case, for example, is telling me that I have to pay a tax to carry out the activity and establishes two tax regimes, one for domiciled companies and another for non-domiciled companies, it is authorizing me to develop the activity, even if they do not give me a license, because I do not need a license for everything, so the fact that we do not need a license does not mean that it is not regulated, it is the same regulation, because they are establishing a special tax regime for me . So this regulatory wave is going to make the entire gambling landscape in Latin America change in the coming years, and from there, we, those in charge of payments, are the ones who have to be up to date with payments.”

The importance of crypto in the gaming market.

.Finally, Salazar returned to the issue of cryptocurrencies and explained “logically there is a prohibition on processing payments with cryptocurrencies for the Peruvian industry, that is already the law, so that will not change until the law is changed if necessary. . But all these rules interact with each other, these rules talk with each other and they are what help us to be able to turn around and say to the bank, this situation is regulated, these actors pay taxes, you can't stop providing services to me, Because basically you would be collecting taxes, it generates employment, so the view is a little different, okay? What are the recent changes and what impact does the regulation of the Peruvian industry have in general? I would say that it has several impacts, some of them I already mentioned, which have to do with the collection that is changing from cash to digital collection, it has other impacts from the communication point of view, but the fact that it is regulated It helps us to be able to show ourselves with a better face towards public opinion and public opinion is ultimately what spreads the news about us, right? So, within the efforts that I feel you have to make as operators, it is also to spread responsible gaming.”