Why Is Payment Infrastructure Becoming iGaming's Next Competitive Battleground?

Product innovation, player acquisition and regulation tend to dominate the conversation around global iGaming growth.

But according to Bryan McMorrine, Director of Partnerships & Client Solutions at real-time settlement network RTGS.global, the sharper edge of competition now sits somewhere less glamorous: payments.

With the sector on course to top $180 billion, operators running across multiple jurisdictions and currencies are being pushed to deliver instant deposits, real-time withdrawals and frictionless cross-border experiences, or risk losing players to a competitor who can. 

SportsBoom sat down with McMorrine to unpack why payments have quietly become the infrastructure layer that makes or breaks an international launch.

Why payment friction is now a direct player retention issue

Games are instant. Players increasingly expect their money to move the same way, and McMorrine is unambiguous about what happens when it doesn't.

"It's too easy for players to leave a platform and switch to a competitor if they feel that local deposits and payouts are not been managed in a timely manner. Games are instant so players expect their payouts to be the same. RTGS.global moves money as fast as the game itself,” McMorrine told SportsBoom.co.uk in an exclusive interview. 

Asked directly whether getting payments right, or wrong, has visibly made or broken an operator's launch in a given market, McMorrine's answer was a flat "100%”. 

In a sector where switching costs for players are close to zero, the payment rail sitting behind the platform has become as much a retention tool as the odds, the game library or the loyalty programme.

The push towards instant settlement and local currency infrastructure

The gap McMorrine is describing is stark in raw numbers. 

Traditional correspondent banking, moving through SWIFT, typically takes between one and five business days to settle. RTGS.global's model compresses that to seconds.

"SWIFT traditionally takes 1 to 5 business days. RTGS.global enables near-instant settlement in seconds, 24/7, 365 days per year."

Part of the delay in conventional cross-border payments comes from currency pairs that don't trade directly. Many "exotic" corridors route through the US dollar as an intermediate step, effectively doubling the settlement chain.

"Some exotic corridors do not traditionally trade as direct currency pairs but instead trade via USD, adding another settlement layer and doubling settlement times."

McMorrine points to a Turkey-to-Tajikistan transaction as an illustration of what direct currency-pair trading can do to that timeline, from a typical two weeks via correspondent banking down to seconds.

"RTGS.global eliminates this by allowing trading directly across any live currency pair, for example, completed settlement transaction from Turkey to Tajikistan in seconds rather than typical two weeks via correspondent banking."

There's also a market-access angle. New territory expansion for an operator has traditionally been a multi-year undertaking, McMorrine claims that timeline can now be measured in days.

"Increasing into new markets can take years to establish but with RTGS.global, iGaming operators can add on new markets in as little as 72 hours via our UI connection or two weeks via API."

Brazil, LatAm and Canada are reshaping global growth strategy

Emerging markets are where the payments conversation gets most concrete. Brazil's Pix system, in particular, has reset player expectations for what "instant" means.

"Brazil's Pix has set the bar at instant, any-time deposits and payouts, and players don't distinguish the gaming experience from the payment experience. Operators are seeing growth in international client base so need access to international local payment rails that can quickly deposit and payout in these countries."

That's pushing operators to think beyond simple pass-through payments and towards genuine local treasury infrastructure.

"RTGS.global also offers local names accounts in the iGaming company name to also hold local balances, supporting treasury management."

McMorrine is careful not to overstate hard adoption figures for real-time rails in iGaming specifically, framing the trend instead as directional growth tied to the sector's trajectory toward $180 billion by 2030.

"We don't have hard adoption percentages, so framing this as growth rather than a stat: the market is racing towards U$180bn by 2030, and demand for real-time rails is accelerating fastest, in Brazil's Pix adoption and regulatory reforms are a big driver of regional LatAm growth. We are seeing increased demand from Canadian MSBs looking for direct instant payments from Canada to the UK."

Canada, meanwhile, is charting its own course rather than converging with UK or US norms. McMorrine puts that down to regulatory preference as much as anything else.

"To date, they seem to be forming their own model as many PSPs in the iGaming space still seem to have a preference for a Canadian license due to perceived ease of dealing with local regulatory requirements versus the more established FCA rules."

The operational reality of fragmented cross-border payment systems

For an operator running UK, LatAm and Canadian operations side by side, McMorrine is blunt about what the underlying payments stack actually looks like today: not unified, but fragmented by region, with FX flows still leaning heavily on the US dollar as a hub currency rather than trading directly between regions.

"Very fragmented by region. For example, to date, LatAm has traditionally primarily traded FX via USD rather than direct to other local regions such as the EU."

Even markets with well-established trade relationships aren't immune. Mexico and the EU, for instance, still struggle to move funds directly and instantly between each other.