Late last year, Bovada quietly introduced banking support for MatchPay, a new third-party service.
Then, just as quietly, they ditched it.
Fast forward about 10 months, and MatchPay is back.
But whether or not it’s back for good remains to be seen.
Of course, we hope it is.
MatchPay, for its part, is a relatively new startup that’s designed to connect online store and service members who wish to buy and sell account balances between one another.
To do so, MatchPay members – called “MatchPay Traders” once enrolled with the free platform – assign portions of their balances for sale and specify one or more P2P apps other members can use to buy said balances.
This allows customers to conclude the transfer of store credits and stored money via PayPal, Venmo, Cash App, Zelle, and other instant-pay options.
Because legal online sportsbooks can’t accept these kinds of payments natively and directly, MatchPay is a perfect match for the industry.
The company acts a sort of go-between that opens up banking access to these P2P products.
Previously, Bovada members have been limited to player-to-player account transfers and sports betting vouchers to accomplish the same thing, though these have several hoops to jump through.
For example, players must receive voucher codes from Bovada, which they then post online for sale.
The coordination of such sales takes time and effort above and beyond typical gambling banking options, which balances out (or even totally negates) the convenience afforded by opening up deposits and withdrawals to PayPal et al. by proxy.
But because MatchPay does all this automatically, it makes the option far more palatable.
The only real questions are whether MatchPay support will now be a permanent fixture at Bovada and whether or not other top online sports betting sites will adopt the service, too.
But those shouldn’t really be questions.
P2P apps likely won’t allow online bet funding with overseas gambling venues any time soon, which means MatchPay could be the only game in town for the foreseeable future.
And that’s a great thing, because MatchPay is a great idea.
But MatchPay itself isn’t related to Bovada in any way, nor is it directly associated with any online gambling site.
That could be a problem.
We’ve seen other betting outlets use – and summarily abandon – similar services before (i.e. BetOnline’s QuickBit implementation, which was shelved earlier this year), so it’s difficult to say with any certainty how much of a sure thing any of these services are.
For good or ill, many financial startups – even those predicated on financial freedom and which take a hands-off approach to private transfers – tend to shy away from any association with the global gambling market.
Cryptocurrencies functionally get around this because of their decentralized natures, but crypto is unique. It’s supposed to be “controversial.”
Should any crypto asset declare itself null and void for a particular type of lawful online transaction, that would be a death knell for the coin in question.
But for actual monetary service companies and brands that require dedicated marketing efforts, online sportsbooks, casinos, and poker rooms may attract – in their views – the “wrong kind of attention.”
Naturally, we think that’s hogwash, but it seems to be the sole snag in services like MatchPay actually sticking.
That said, Bovada does nothing if not its due diligence, and it’s not very likely that they’d have reintroduced MatchPay just to get rid of it again.
Whatever kinks or “messaging” quirks needed to be worked out probably have been, and it appears that Bovada members now have an easy, accessible way to make sports betting deposits and claim same-day payouts using any popular person-to-person instant-pay platform.
Obviously, we’ll keep a close eye on MatchPay going forward. But right now, it seems like it’s finally back for the long haul.
