Ahead of SBC Summit Americas, we sat down with Leighton Webb, Vice President and General Manager of iGaming and Sports Betting at PayNearMe, a Bronze headline sponsor of the event.
What elements of SBC Summit Americas work so well for your organisation, and why is it important for you to be there this year?
Face-to-face interaction with our clients, partners and other industry colleagues is incredibly valuable, and SBC Summit Americas provides the perfect setting for those meaningful in-person conversations. The show’s well-organized networking events and after-hours gatherings allow our team to connect with key stakeholders beyond the show floor, building relationships that fuel future collaboration. We’re also excited to see how the show evolves with the combination of North and Latin America and the move to Florida—it signals growth and new opportunities.
What’s your key objective at this year’s event and what are the main products/services you’ll be promoting?
Our primary goal is to bring awareness to the critical role payments play in an operator’s overall brand and product experience—and the impact they have on player satisfaction and business performance. We’ll be educating attendees on how to lower their total cost of acceptance by optimizing the payment experience.
PayNearMe’s platform empowers operators to reduce friction, improve reliability, and boost player satisfaction, all while driving down hidden costs associated with payment processing. Our message is simple: in today’s competitive market, a smart payments strategy isn’t just nice to have—it’s a competitive advantage.
What would you highlight as the biggest opportunity in the betting and gaming industry over the next couple of years?
There’s a growing opportunity in driving operational efficiency through smarter payment strategies. The industry has shifted from aggressive growth at all costs to a more sustainable focus on profitability. Operators are now prioritizing cost management, and lowering the total cost of payment acceptance while increasing acceptance rates is a smart, impactful place to start.
In a broader sense, we’re hearing a lot about new legislation and regulation that has the potential to open up adjacent gaming markets. We’re keeping a close eye on these to see where we can help operators in these younger markets.
And lastly, risk and fraud is always an opportunity for improvement. With the continuing advancements of AI and machine learning, operators have more technology at their disposal to help manage risk and prevent fraud more effectively.
What elements of your business do you feel are best placed to take advantage of that opportunity?
PayNearMe is uniquely positioned to help operators capitalize on all of the opportunities I previously mentioned—by lowering operational costs, future-proofing payments infrastructure, and enhancing fraud protection. As a strategic partner, we enable operators to scale efficiently and stay competitive in a rapidly evolving market.
What areas of the business should we be looking to for innovation in the next 12 months?
As I mentioned before, AI and machine learning hold so much potential for our industry. Operators can be doing more with the data they have, and we can help by giving them AI-powered tools that use their data to enhance their payment and risk strategy.
In addition, our focus for 2025 is lowering the cost of accepting payments for the gaming industry. Beyond standard transaction costs, there are hidden factors that drive up overall payment costs and eat into their bottom line. Our all-in-one platform allows operators to manage their payment strategy more efficiently, giving them full control of their experience while freeing up resources to focus on other critical areas of their business. With PayNearMe, operators can increase player loyalty and retention through an exceptional payment experience while reducing back-office efforts around managing payments across vendors, channels and locations—effectively lowering the total cost of accepting payments.
What new technology do you feel will have the biggest impact for stakeholders?
One factor that impacts the total cost of accepting payments is player loyalty and retention. When a good customer opts to abandon an app due to friction-filled payments or an experience that doesn’t feel personalized to them, that impacts an operator’s bottom line. PayNearMe is using a vast pool of community data—powered by Accertify—to launch a VIP player identification program. Operators will be able to pinpoint responsible, low-risk players and offer them customized betting limits, effectively increasing brand loyalty.
What core challenges do you help solve for your customers/partners?
The payments ecosystem in the online gaming space is fragmented and complex.
Operators often juggle multiple vendors and disparate systems, leading to inefficiencies, increased risk and higher costs. PayNearMe solves this problem by delivering a unified, secure platform that integrates seamlessly with a wide range of payment methods, fraud prevention tools, and built-in redundant processing and banking —through a single integration and contract.
We offer a feature-rich, flexible and scalable payments platform that can be configured to meet the needs of operators of any size, within all genres of online gaming. PayNearMe solves the fragmentation problem by integrating all the critical payment-focused vendors and technologies that operators need, combining the popular deposit and payout methods players want with powerful fraud prevention tools, payment data insights that boost customer lifetime value, built-in redundancy that improves uptime and much more.
Who have you especially enjoyed working with over the past year (partner/client) and why?
Over the past year, we’ve deepened our relationship with PayPal. Access to PayPal and Venmo are a must-have for many players, and we’re proud to make this option easily available to operators of all sizes through our platform.
We’ve also added PayPal’s Braintree processing solution to strengthen our Smart Switch™ technology, which enables redundant processing and automatic rerouting in the event of processor downtime. While larger operators may already have redundancy in place, our approach makes this capability accessible to all, enhancing uptime and reliability across the board.
Can you tell us more specifically how you worked with that partner and how the relationship is developing?
While we’ve been integrated with PayPal since 2022, our recent collaboration goes beyond payments. We’re working closely to expand our open ecosystem by enabling easier integrations with additional PayPal services and other technology partners.
This approach to innovation helps operators improve acceptance rates, reduce total cost of ownership, and future-proof their payments infrastructure. It’s about delivering long-term value and giving our clients the tools they need to thrive in a fast-evolving landscape.
What are you hoping to learn from the conference at the SBC Summit Americas and which elements of the agenda will you be focusing on the most?
Our first priority is to listen. SBC Summit Americas gives us the opportunity to hear directly from operators about the challenges they’re facing. This allows us to ensure our roadmap aligns with their needs.
We’re also looking forward to participating in a Payment Expert panel with our partner Trustly and client FanDuel, where we’ll be discussing how to reduce the cost of acceptance while improving the player experience.
Beyond that, we’ll be exploring new technologies and potential partners that can help us continue to enhance our platform and deliver more value to our clients.
