U.S. Casinos Push To Accept Cashless Payments

You know what it's like at a casino: You hand over your money. You get your chips. You place your bets. If you win, you earn more chips. If you lose, you don't. But what if there were no chips and no cash exchanged at all?

That's what the casino industry in America would like to have happen. Citing concerns with the coronavirus and future viruses, they argue that eliminating chips and cash completely would make their casinos much safer.

"Advancing opportunities for digital payments has been one of our top priorities since my first day at the AGA," said Bill Miller, the president and CEO of the American Gaming Association. "It aligns with gaming’s role as a modern, 21st-century industry and bolsters our already rigorous regulatory and responsible gaming measures. The COVID-19 pandemic made it all the more important to advance our efforts to provide customers with the payment choice they are more comfortable with and have increasingly come to expect in their daily lives."

Currently, laws in Nevada and New Jersey make it difficult for casinos to accept cashless payments.

Nevada gambling regulators are “open to looking at new ways of how technology, including cashless wagering, can help attract new customers and be beneficial for not only the industry but even for responsible gaming measures as well,” said Sandra Douglass Morgan, chairwoman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board.

The Nevada Gaming Commission has a hearing scheduled for June 25 where it is expected to accept the state Gaming Control Board’s recommendation for amendments to state regulations that would streamline the approval and testing process for modern payment methods.

While this would be a major change for the casino industry it could work to reduce transmission of the virus itself. In addition, people would be able to place limits on how much they could be per day through cashless and therefore gambling overall would be safer.

Cashless remains illegal in general because it didn't exist when casino regulations were written. Now that it is an option people should have the right to use it and make cash and chips a thing of the past.