PaySafe Group is one of the largest companies in the world when it comes to electronic payments in general, and they are definitely the largest non-credit card company that focuses on online gambling transactions. They own the two largest electronic wallets in the industry, Neteller an Skrill, and they are also behind Paysafecard, the voucher-based system that replaced Ukash. Recently, it’s been announced that they will no longer accept prepaid MasterCards for funding accounts starting on November 25, and this is something that will go into effect in more than 100 countries. This is also a great opportunity for Ethereum to take hold of a larger portion of the market.
Changes in Market Share
There’s the way the issue has unfolded: Many players are having their primary banking method taken away from them fairly suddenly and in a way that will likely create resentment for both credit card options and for the PaySafe Group properties Skrill and Neteller. That covers virtually all of the top payment options in the industry today, meaning that there will be a significant and non-trival number of players who will be more open than ever to looking into alternative payment options. This is the perfect storm for Ethereum gambling sites to become more aggressive and pick up a piece of the market share that they would otherwise have to struggle for over a longer period of time.
Opportunity and Making it Work
Not all countries have been blocked from using these cards. The 28 countries in the European Union along with six other countries that are a part of the Single Euro Payments Area will be able to continue to use them. However, Australia, Brazil, Russia and many other major markets are not a part of this group, and that’s where Ethereum should focus its efforts. It would take some serious advertising and marketing to pull off, but there’s definitely a demand for an alternative payment system that has been set up with this play by the PaySafe Group, and it only has a limited time window before it will no longer be viable. What we hope happens is that Ethereum steps up to get in on the action before it’s too late.
The Position of Ethereum in the Online Gambling Market
The fact of the matter is that Ethereum is in a somewhat delicate position right now. It has a ton of long-term advantages over other major banking methods, even the popular crypto-currency bitcoin, but it’s suffering from a lack of exposure and a lack of marketing efforts. Players also tend to be pretty hesitant to try a new banking option whenever they have something in place that’s working for them, so it’s a tough market to crack. The opportunity that has been presented here by the PaySafe Group’s pulling of the prepaid cards is something that most likely won’t happen again, at least for a long time, so it’s critical that they jump on this as much as possible.
If they are able to pull this off, it will greatly accelerate the popularity of Ethereum. Many people believe that this could be the one virtual currency to overtake bitcoin after dozens (if not hundreds) of alternative options have tried, but they haven’t had the advantages that Ethereum have on both structural and practical levels compared to bitcoin. When you add in the fact that there have been numerous scandals surrounding bitcoin in the past year or two, it’s clear that something’s got to give in a major way.
Players are looking for a more reliable, safer, secure and anonymous way of making online gambling transactions to protect their privacy and keep their money available whenever they want it. Ethereum can do all of this, but it needs to grow to be available to more players at more operators. This is just the opening that they need, and now we all get to sit back and see if they’re going to take advantage of it or not. If they don’t, then it’s unlikely that we’ll see another opportunity for them to jump this far ahead all at once again.
You can learn more about what ETH is in our Ethereum explained article.