As it prepares for the opening of intrastate online poker in Nevada, Caesars Entertainment has announced it will team up with a familiar name from online poker’s past for payment processing. Optimal Payments, a publicly traded company on the London Stock Exchange, has signed an agreement with Caesars to provided payment processing services for the casino giant once it goes live with its online poker platform. You might know the company as NeTeller.As a part of the agreement, Optimal Payments will be in charge of several areas of Caesars' online operation including payment processing, fraud management, and other related services.
“This is a groundbreaking deal for Optimal Payments and demonstrates our ability to provide real value to globally renowned, land-based gaming operators and their leading brands as the first step in our strategy to capitalize on the regulated U.S. market,” said Joel Leonoff, President and Chief Executive Officer of Optimal Payments. The Nevada Gaming Control Board must approve the deal, but that is thought to be a mere formality.
Previously, Optimal Payments was known as NeTeller, which processed online gaming transactions and was a “virtual wallet” for other purchases. The company processed more than $7.3 billion in transactions in 2005, including online poker transactions in North America, before a string of events nearly brought the company down.
After the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act in 2006, NeTeller was one of the first targets struck by U.S. law enforcement. In January 2007, the founders of NeTeller, Stephen Lawrence and John Lefebvre, were arrested in the U.S. and charged with conspiracy to illegally transfer funds. The attack by the Federal Government followed other closures and arrests that also involved several prominent sports books at the time, including BetOnSports and SportingBet.
The NeTeller arrests sent shockwaves through the online poker world, as American players who had accounts on the site were immediately locked out from their money, including Isaac Haxton, who reportedly had $800,000 stuck. Over $55 million was allegedly in limbo after the U.S. Government’s arrests of Lawrence and Lefebvre, and that money would not be paid out to American customers for over six months. In June 2007, Lawrence and Lefebvre pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges and paid fines.
The action against NeTeller struck the company hard, as it is estimated that 67% of its processing at that time came from American online poker players. The company rebounded, however, first changing its name to NEOVIA Financial in 2008 before purchasing Optimal Payments of Montreal in 2011 and changing the company’s name again.The announcement of Optimal Payments' return to the U.S. market has the company’s stock price on the up-tick on the London Stock Exchange, where it is trading at 5.11p, according to Yahoo.
The move by Caesars to team up with Optimal Payments signifies another step in the road to a regulated online poker system, albeit only in Nevada. Caesars is the first to announce a partnership of this sort and already has extensive reach into online poker operations through a partnership with 888. Caesars Entertainment appears to be ready to go once Nevada “throws the switch” for its intrastate online poker network.
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