Ask the Slot Expert: Cashless gaming - the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Not much good came from the Las Vegas locals casinos' response to the coronavirus pandemic. Some discontinued long-running promotions. Some doubled the action required to earn a point on video poker. Some eliminated daily 3x points. Some cut back on the number of point multiplier days. Some cut back on gifts. Some closed their buffets.

I can think of only one good thing that has happened since March 2020. Cashless gaming is now available in many casinos. Cashless gaming is the next logical step from coin-less gaming. Ticket systems eliminated the need for coins and tokens. Tickets and paper money became the coin of the realm. Now let's get rid of the tickets and bills.

Cashless gaming generally works like this. You create an account with a payment processor and link your bank account or credit card to it. When you want to play, you transfer money from your bank or credit card. Most systems call this your wallet. When you're at a machine, you use the app on your smartphone to connect to the machine and then you can transfer money from your wallet to the game. When you're finished playing, you can either cash out to a ticket or transfer the credits back to your wallet. When you don't need funds in your wallet, you can transfer the money back to your bank account.

When I first heard about cashless gaming a few years ago, I thought it was unlikely to ever be implemented. Regulators don't want to make it too easy for players to get in over their heads and lose more than they can afford.

You can't swipe your credit card at a machine to get more money on your credit meter. You have to get up from the machine and go to a kiosk to get the cash advance. Maybe you'll think better of it during the walk and go to the coffee shop instead.

Then the rona came along and businesses implemented systems to reduce touchpoints. Although the Nevada Gaming Control Board allowed cashless gaming in June 2020, the systems weren't available in the casinos I frequent until a few months ago.

I've written about my experiences with the STN Cash system at Red Rock in the past. I was an early adopter of its Cardless Connect system a few years ago. Instead of inserting your players card into a machine, you could use the STN app on your phone to "card-in". I gave up on that after a while because it took longer for my phone to connect to the machine using Bluetooth than to insert my card.

I'm back to using Cardless Connect because that's the first step in using STN Cash. I had a few problems before availability of the system was formally announced, but it has been mostly reliable the past few months. I still occasionally have a problem with the app saying it has lost connection with the machine even though the machine still reports that my card is "in". I can usually use the app to connect to the machine again and all is well, but once or twice the app was not able to reconnect.

The worst problem I've had recently was when I was unable to transfer my credit meter back to my wallet. No matter how many times I tried to transfer the money back to my wallet, the system just would not do it. I eventually had to print a ticket.

I've been using the cashless system so much, I forgot about the ticket. I just found it in my wallet -- my physical wallet -- a few days ago. It was for toll money (i.e., a few bucks), so that's probably another reason I forgot about it.

I had noticed a screen for Boyd Pay on the card reader displays at Suncoast. I figured Boyd would have their own cashless gaming system soon. I never saw any announcements for it, but I noticed a Boyd Pay Wallet icon in the Boyd Rewards app when I used it for the first time in a long time last week.

Woohoo! I can use cashless gaming at Suncoast too. I started going through the registration process on my phone, but then I got to a page that listed the fees.

Fees? STN Cash is completely free. There's no fee to transfer money into the STN Cash account and there's no fee to transfer money back.

Boyd Pay changes a 4.95% fee when you fund your Boyd Pay Wallet with a bank card, bank account or PayPal.

This is when the action in a movie stops and the narrator tells you what you need to know.

You have two wallets with Boyd Pay, your Boyd Pay Wallet and your Casino Wallet. First you transfer money from the real world to your Boyd Pay Wallet. Then you transfer money from your Boyd Pay Wallet to your Casino Wallet. Then you can transfer money from your Casino Wallet to your machine.

Resume action.

There are no fees within the Boyd Pay Multiverse of Madness. You can transfer between your Boyd Pay Wallet and Casino Wallet for free and you can transfer between your Casino Wallet and your machines for free. It's only when you want to interface outside the Multiverse that you have to pay a fee.

"Well," I can hear you asking, "at least they let you get your money out without a paying a fee, right?"

Nope. There is a $2 transaction fee to transfer from your Boyd Pay Wallet to your bank account.

A nearly 5% hit on funding makes you behind before you even play a game. The Boyd Pay FAQ page says that there is a way to avoid that fee. You can bring cash to the cage to load to your account. This eliminates one of the big advantages of cashless gaming for me -- not having to bring a large amount of cash to the casino. The page doesn't say whether you can withdraw at the cage to avoid the $2 withdrawal fee.

I can't decide which fee I find more objectionable, having to pay to deposit money to gamble with or having to pay to get your money out.

Needless to say, I won't be using Boyd Pay under the current fees. I could get around the deposit fee by taking money to the cage, but there's no way I'm going to pay to get my money out of the Boyd Pay Multiverse.

I think cashless gaming, like ticket systems, will be universally available. Unlike ticket systems, though, it won't be universally required. It's hard to believe, but not everyone has a smartphone. Some people, furthermore, are reluctant to do online banking.

Can you imagine a machine that doesn't have a bill acceptor?

Have you used cashless gaming? Would you use it? Let me know your thoughts and experiences.

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