- Playtech founderTeddy Sagi is raising $100m for his SafeCharge payment processing company.
- He plans to use the money to launch a digital wallet for use in online gambling transactions.
- The launch of a digital wallet will put the company head to head with established names like Skrill and NETELLER in the customer facing market.
Playtech’s founder, Teddy Sagi, has taken his SafeCharge payment processing company to London’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM) to raise $100 million. He wants to use the money to launch a digital wallet for use in online gambling transactions.
SafeCharge was founded in 2010, with the aim of producing much faster and more reliable payment processing for gambling deposits and withdrawals. Until now it has primarily been a back end service provider offering its main “Cashier” product to gaming operators.
The launch of a digital wallet will put the company head to head with established names like Skrill and NETELLER in the customer facing market.
Among other benefits, Safecharge promises fewer rejected deposits, something that is irritating for players, but even more of a problem for operators. The failure to develop comprehensive and reliable deposit and withdrawal processes has been one of the big issues in the nascent state regulated US market.
The company claims to be able to process gambling transactions at a rate of 300 transactions per second. In 2013 it handled $5 billion in transactions producing revenues of $43.1 million.
Sagi floated Playtech on AIM in 2006—he has now turned 42 and last week sold 15.4% of his Playtech shares for £326 million.
