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Paybefore: How important is prepaid to your overall pay- ments strategy?
JL: We’re issuing a significant amount of cards for ourselves and for our white-label program. We’re a principal member of MasterCard for prepaid card issuing, which allows us to serve as our own issuer in Europe.
As such, we have a very healthy MasterCard program.
If you open up a NETELLER wallet account, you get a prepaid card— prepaid Discover card in North America, prepaid MasterCard in Europe. The prepaid card enables online and brick-and-mortar access to your NETELLER wallet funds.
Paybefore: Skrill was probably your biggest competitor in the online gaming space. What got you excited about this deal?
JL: Skrill is a company we’ve been looking at probably since 2011. They’re kind of like our twin sister, servicing the same markets and same customers as NETELLER, which made them an obvious and attractive ac- quisition candidate. We have a lot of synergies and felt there was real value in bringing the two companies together and integrating the businesses.
We have similar footprints, but what we found is that they’re strong in markets where our presence wasn’t as strong and vice versa. Together, we have a much
stronger foothold across markets and we’ll be able to offer a truly global solution.
Paybefore: Will you be keep- ing the Skrill brand or are you planning to rebrand everything as NETELLER?
We’re a bold company.... Don’t think we’re done yet.
—Joel Leonoff, Optimal Payments
JL: Both NETELLER and Skrill will continue as brands and, for the most part, it’ll be business as usual.
Paybefore: What opportunities outside of gaming are important
to you in the U.S. and elsewhere as you look to expand?
JL: Gaming is one area of focus for us in the U.S., but it’ll take some time for more states to come online. When they do, we’ll be a major participant. We’re gaining traction in the general e-commerce arena, helping merchants reach con- sumers around the world by enabling them to accept many payment types, including some
complex payment types in Russia and South America, for example.
paysafecard is a product we’re inheriting from Skrill, which essen- tially creates a digital currency from cash payments in the brick-and- mortar world. We feel particularly excited about the growth opportu- nities for paysafecard, which sold €1.6 billion (US$1.75 billion) in vouchers during the 12 months ended Sept. 30, 2014.
Paybefore: Where are you growing the fastest right now?
JL: We’re seeing great growth in NETELLER by virtue of opening
new markets—South America, India, Japan and West Africa. And, we’ve done a good job of integrating new payment types and converting more users to VIPs. The more ways we can enable consumers to load funds, the better because it makes us more relevant.
NETBANX also has significant opportunities across the board, especially in new geographies.
Paybefore: There are a lot of changes in payments right now— shrinking borders, potential around blockchain, mobile wallets. What trends are most important as you lead Optimal?
JL: Relevance is important to us—bringing the right solutions to the table for merchants and con- sumers. The biggest momentum is around mobile payments and smartphone technology enabling
volume 8 • fall 2015
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