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welcome to today’s episode a real Christmas special and today we are joined by Sean a leader whose journey in their gaming began in customer support and it involved into leading Payment Solutions with over a decade of experience Sean has worn many hats from managing risk and fraud to enhancing customer experience we will delve into his early days at a fast-paced startup where the chaos of juggling multiple roles at the same time shaped his leadership philosophy Sean shares how his best step approach to learning led

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him to discover his passion for payments whether you’re intrigued by the art of leadership curious about how AI is revolutionizing payments or looking for strategies in a fast pace and Ever Changing industry this episode has something valuable for you so sit back relax and enjoy this insightful conversation with Sean and happy festive season you’ve had a quite deep Journey starting in customer support and working your way up to Leading payment solution what inspired you to pursue this field

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and how did you did those early roles shape your approach to leadership yes for sure so just to give some context here I’ve started off in the online online gaming industry like just over a decade ago now and I started off at a startup company and basically given that it was a startup company it was I believe it was around 15 of us at the time when uh when I was working at Mex entertainment you basically need to wear different hats cuz you you need to in order to make it work so this gives a

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very unique opportunity for anyone working within a startup to really learn the ropes from every individual dep Department that that the company has obviously because you’re you’re help one one minute you’re helping out with anything risk and fraud for example next you’re helping out on customer support then there’s something with regards to fleets that you you may need to dive into as well so it gives a very unique opportunity for you to get firsthand experience doing different things so

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working at a startup especially the beginning stages of of your career is something that I would highly highly recommend because it gives you this it’s it’s very busy and it at surface level looks chaotic but it it will most definitely have a very very net positive impact on uh on your career for sure I mean it’s been I would say it’s it’s been quite pivotal for my own career to to be fair and yes obviously you given that you have you have your own experience or let’s say opportunity to

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the analogy I use actually is it’s like you’re at a buffet basically and you get to taste the different plates before deciding on your favorite one which is exactly what I’ve done and basically at the end of my Buffet let’s say I got to to payment product and I fell in love with uh with payment product and um based on my own aspirations in terms of what my like aspired career trajectory is payments was the was the one that really struck gold for me and basically I decided to take that on phone forward

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and here we are now around 11 years later almost at more than a decade yeah of course although although dinner is maybe not the best analogy because more it’s more like a parkour you you need to to do and and eventually you find the which the which one fits you best that’s very true very true but it’s I mean it’s really fun at the end of the day yes I agree and and you’ve let teams from very sculptures and professional backgrounds what’s your secret to fostering collaboration and

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maintaining team performance especially in the hybrid or remote environments which we also have at Kaizen exactly so obviously if um let’s start off with with the theme itself something that I love doing with every team that I’ve that I’ve LED in the past even here at present it’s getting to know your team and this is what I don’t mean at a friendship level in a in a way it’s it’s very important that you understand what each individual individual member within your team needs in order to be let’s say

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to in order to perform to the best of their abilities you can’t just take a one- size fits all kind of approach and and basically assume that is the same for for all of your team members irrelevant of its size you have to tailor your approach depending on on the individual and the way I tackle this is by having a very direct conversation with each team member basically that uh especially those that I’m directly managing so I understand what is it that you need from from your managers which

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in this case it would be me uh so what what do you need from my side in order to be effective is it are you find like a good example that I can give you is certain individuals would would prefer if they have more constant one to ones for example to get to just to make sure that and put their mind at EAS that they’re on the right track and they’re doing other individuals would see this as a bit more daunting and would rather have like for example for them it would be no news is basically good news and if

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there’s something that comes up they know that you’ll be you’ll be speaking to them anyway so obviously you again you need to tailor your approach to your to each individual and understand what it is that they need in order to be effective and also to to understand what their career trajectory is looking like you can’t again you can’t assume that everyone aspires to be X Y or Z and you can’t assume that you you basically have to tailor your approach to be more of a mentor than a simply just a their

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manager so to speak that’s the leadership approach you you have uh taken on but usually overcommunication is better than no news is good news right I would agree yes as in over communication like because then what you need to understand what constitutes over communication I would definitely not be just leaving a dead space let’s say for nuances to kind of develop that is not the approach for sure what I mean is obviously for the ones that do require so this is what I meant by for the ones

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that do require more consistent communication and checking in for these individuals what I found throughout my experience is that it’s very important to praise the positive side of whatever the whatever project they’re working on whatever task they’re looking into and and they’re doing on a day-to-day basis it’s not essential to stroke their ego if you will but it’s more just uh a recognition that I see you I see the work that you’re doing and this is and the the work you’re doing is

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is correct it’s on par with the expect it’s with my expectation on par with the company’s expectation and so on so forth so this gives a sense of relief a sense of ease and you relief any chance of anxiety so to speak for this particular individual where others for for example that not not having this consistent level of yes yes this is this is right this is wrong this is actually if there’s something wrong obviously this need to communicate straight away but but you get what I mean it’s it’s it’s

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that kind of tailoring and this is one of many examples obviously of how you can tailor your approach to each individual and how constructive let’s say criticism in general as a whole obviously constructive criticism is given to each individual and how direct you need you have to be or need to be with each individual versus certain individuals would require a let’s say say a softer touch but you still have to retain that direct approach because you need to remain clear on what you’re

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communicating and what the objective is so this you can’t beat around the bush too much but obviously you need to be careful with the selection of words that you’re using to communicate what needs to be done basically yeah I recently learned about something called the sandwich approach so that’s yes yeah you’ve heard of this so they basically laying exactly positivity with what needs to be um let’s say worked on different lay exactly yeah it works really well I’ve noticed that it works

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really well actually and how do you ensure seamless collaboration across these CR critical functions okay between payment like payments often uh sit at the intersection of compliance legal fness and other departments how do you ensure these seamless collaboration across these critical uh functions right so I’ve um uh I’ve worked with a with a number of a few companies now the first thing that I do literally in the first week or maybe two weeks of of the start of my my journey there is L meet the

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stakeholders within each department to understand their role and function because again you can’t assume that because company X X’s um compliance team does ABC you can’t automatically assume that at company why the same applies so the first thing I do is meet every individual every stakeholder within each department to understand what their overall function is what the collaboration has been like in the past what in their opinion is working well and what needs to be improved on and why

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this basically gives you the ability to first of all understand and speed ramp your entire onboarding process just by getting your hands dirty in a way to understand the company at a more intimate level so to speak and second you also understand what the current policies are and you understand how the Wheel Works before trying to reinvent it because the last thing you want to create is alienation by means of starting to change things around without having done the leg work first to understand why the wheel functions the

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way it does at the moment you’ll then obviously have your own take on how the wheel should perform and how it should turn and so on so forth and that’s where you start adding in your own personal your personal attributes to to to to the wheel but you first need to understand what’s what and making by doing so obviously you learn the different po policies that you have in place the procedures that each department has and this ensures that you you aren’t creating a gap in between what they’re

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used to and what you’re used to and you’re kind of meeting in the middle obviously you’ll understand what is important to them what isn’t as important so you have the right conversations having the right conversations with each stakeholder means that you’re being efficient with time you’re being efficient with your own time and with their time so they’ll appreciate this as well from your side yeah other that that is my Approach at least re yeah you don’t want to re

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reinvent the wheel um again and again and again and what’s your approach to evaluating and improving the performance of payment providers and how do you decide which new solution to integrate right so those are two separate branches so to speak so you have on one side you have the ensuring the how the performance of each PSP so and evaluating the it its own performance compared to the competitors and then the second part of the question was Finding and finding and integrating new Solutions you said yes right so on

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the first let’s start with the finding actually the finding part so for you to find particular solution that you obviously need to understand exactly what you’re looking for so what does this mean it means looking at the integration type that you that you need are you using a payment ortion platform are you using a are you opting in for a for a direct integration so you have to take these into consideration because it will have a a massive impact on your on your cost it will have a a massive

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impact on the amount of time that you need to take that particular solution live obviously direct Integrations will always take longer than than using a payment orchestration platform if obviously the solution is already integrated within that that platform but on the most part they would be especially with the higher performing or let’s say or higher known payment platforms so you have to take a lot of this and not just to the direct cost so the commercial side of the agreement ah this how does this compare commercially

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to the to to the other one you have to factor in a lot of different variables you also need to understand a very important thing which is obviously the approval ratios you need to dive deep into again understanding what you’re looking for so and you have to dissect it down because you can’t just say for example I’m looking for a car solution that’s a very broad a very broad statement you need to tailor it in a way that fits your own specific need need which is I’m looking for a payment

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solution that is is performing well for licensed operators in UK for example or Germany that is a lot more it’s it’s actually as I’m as I’m talking I’m actually reminded by how to efficiently use CH chbt basically and any open AI if you just type in question answer format it’s only going to give you a very base level response whereas if you implement and instruct it to really give you the answers that you need by giving it more context the better you’re the better the

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better the output and the same thing applies here to knowing and finding what it is that you’re looking for otherwise it’s it’s just a crapshoot really on the other side of the spectrum then you have the you have the evaluating the performance of of each solution once again you have to dive deep into let’s take cards because it’s it’s quite easy to to to explain in terms of how to uh to to evaluate the the solution so again you’re looking at not just a surface level for example approval ratio but

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you’re diving deep into the individual markets you’re looking at the individual bins how the each bin is performing under provider X compared to provider Y in terms of when you’ve just integrated a new solution you don’t just open up the the Vive to 100% and say let’s let’s see what’s going to happen because this at the end of the day especially when it comes to Solutions which are tailored for first time depositors if this first time depositor that has just recently

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registered at the casino has a bad experience just because they’re using untested or rather than untested let’s say untested but it’s not really untested from a QA or technological standpoint but untested in real time player deposits at your company at or on your Brands if they have because it’s it hasn’t been optimized your Casino or optimized to your to the target market that you’re looking into you may have you may eventually lose display basically because the let’s say they’re

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they’re quite adant on using cards as their main solution and basically they they experience they have a bad experience with the user flow uh or whatever it may be you this may lead you to losing in that uh that particular relationship so this is why it’s very important for you to trickle volumes into into newly integ ated Solutions see exactly what you what you intend on uh extracting from this payment solution and making various strategic decisions into in terms of How It’s imp integrated

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how it’s implemented and how it’s enabled across your your user base Bas basically or your player base yeah Define define which metric you want to track test and see what the outcome is exactly and it’s very interesting that you say that you can do it with Chad GPT because it also has a good bridge to the next question but also because in the end it might all come down to prompt engineering eventually in a few years but I mean we will see but Ai and and and automations are rapidly transforming

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the industry uh so how do you see these Technologies reshaping payments and particularly in fraud detection or personalization yes AI is most definitely going to play play a massive massive Parts when it comes to the online payment space um be it online gaming or much every other other space uh imagin with where online payment is required which is pretty much everywhere nowadays at this point in time I don’t feel like we’re leveraging as a let’s say let’s just stick to the online gam

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gaming industry at least because obviously that’s that’s where my experience lies I we we’re not currently utilizing jity or AI yeah we’re not utilizing AI to the to its maximum cap capability or not not even close in reality there are certain uh certain Solutions which are opting into investing their resources to optimize their their workflows and so on so forth to have more AI uh integration within the solution which I would highly encourage at this stage because this means that at a latest stage where AI is

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basically the norm and the standard the last thing you want as a especially as a B2B business is to be uh behind the cve basically you really need to understand that this is the trajectory that the online payment spaces is is moving towards and you have to put your chips in the right order and basically make the right right Investments AI is one of those one of those uh Investments to make obviously as that stands today I’ve seen certain implementations of how AI is being used in the payment space it

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needs a lot of optimization I haven’t seen a a solution that literally floored me or wowed me to the point of saying this is revolutionary let’s say but this will most definitely be happening in the future for sure no no doubt about it and and what are what is one of the Innovations you are most excited about or what’s one of the AI Integrations you most excited about so that is that is a a good question in terms of what I’m really excited to seeing is for example to be able to in real time and this is

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something that I’ve seen with certain Solutions but it’s it’s it’s still again it still needs a lot of optimization in terms of rooting different traffic in real time so as opposed to having manual you have to do this manually from through your team and by tracking it at different times this is done by by having an AI functionality which again I’ve seen but I haven’t seen it work to the extent that it let’s say it should be working at and this will allow you to much be able to make um rting routing

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trust and processes much faster which means that the chances of you converting those players is is significantly higher and at the end of the day that is exactly what you want is to conver convert especially newly registered players into depositing players that’s basically the the the entire game plan here see so it’s you need to make sure that you have everything in your in Your Arsenal and you’re you’re implementing everything in Your Arsenal in order to make this happen exciting times exciting

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times ahead at least um for on a on a different note if you if you had a magic want and you could wave it to solve or change one thing what would that one thing be and why right right so the answer comes that’s comes to mind would actually create quite a bit of a monopoly so it does come with cons as well I guess but what like so if I had a magic wand I would say that I would create a solution that is that is well understood and popular within the masses so basically the because something that I’ve learned very

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earlier on in my in my payments career is that each individual Market have their own preferences in terms of different Payment Solutions so for example if you had to look at the UK for example a few years ago it was if you had to take into account a few years ago 95% of the transactions would go through through cards nowadays they’re more open to open banking open banking is is one of those solutions that is really one one to look out for in fact I’m seeing a lot more competition enter the space of

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of open Banking and for good reason because I do believe that this is It’s I can’t say it’s the new big thing because it’s been around for for for a while but it’s it’s now being adopted by a lot more markets that were more card heavy in the past and this will hopefully reshape the payment space and be will allow us to make to convert more players and so so forth and bring the the user journey into more of a standard let’s say into a standard flow which means rather than creating brand

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awareness it’s creating a solution awareness so in essence the players by automation familiar with the process familiar with the flow that they’re looking at and this immediately creates a sense of ease for the player so the the the depositing process they’re familiar with it they know exactly what to do what to expect and if something goes goes AR right with the process they know exactly why and this cuts down on a lot of uh resource that is required in terms of customer support for example a lot of

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issues and uh grievances with the user flow so basically yes this is the Once I’m I wave this proverbial magic wand I would uh create solution awareness amongst the players into a particular solution that is basically the flow is like an outstanding perfect flow it’s essentially just creating a habit for for all the players exactly exactly the same habit for for all of them at the same time exactly in a way so it’s um they’re very familiar with exactly what’s going on and so on so

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forth so knowing that there is a sense of let’s say anxiety of starting something new that comes with anything starting anything new in in life in reality starting of a a New Journey with a new casino can be a bit of an anxious thing for a player so having those Payment Solutions that they’re already aware of they’re familiar with they know exactly how to use that reduces that level of anxiety and that will obviously boost the player conversion something to work on uh I want to thank you for your time uh

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that was the final question so oh very good thank you so much for having me on no worries thank you