The provision of online payment services has been yet another area to have been catalyzed by the general application of digital technology. More and more people have been looking for means to move funds quickly, effortlessly, and relatively cheaply, and have been embracing the convenience online payment service providers offer.
It is one of those universally repeated clichés that money gives great power and great power comes with great responsibility. With that said, payment service providers are empowered to handle their customers’ funds, to store and move them responsibly and as their owners find fit.
Founded in 2001 and formerly known as Moneybookers, Skrill has established itself as one of the preferred payment and money transfer services providers. According to the official website of the London-headquartered business, it processes more than 150 million transactions every year with those being valued at around €13 billion. These figures can be used as a good illustration of the great scope of Skrill’s power.
Among other things, Skrill has established itself as one of the preferred providers of money transfer services by the online gambling industry. Both gambling customers and gambling organizations have been opting for its services and products, to great extent due to its lower costs and rapidness.
And here comes the question whether Skrill is using the power it has in a responsible manner, a manner that does not and cannot affect its many users from around the world in a negative manner. A very quick look at its website can tell us that its activity is not limited to the provision of online payment services of different nature.
Upon entering Skrill’s homepage, visitors are, among other things, invited into an Exclusive Offers section, which is actually the main object of this article. As its name suggests, said section features exclusive offers from different online casino, poker, sports betting, and bingo operators as well as from forex/binary options trading providers.
Although there is not anything wrong with iGaming affiliate marketing as a business model and a means for one business or another to make a profit by deploying this model, the fact that a payment services providers has adopted it raises some moral questions. It is simply unavoidable.
As mentioned above, Skrill is among those organizations that have power over people’s money, over how it is handled, moved, and even spent. And it has apparently been offering one way in which they can spend it. Possessing certain power over one’s funds while encouraging this one into using those funds on activities that may help them multiply them or lose them completely does not seem like the right way to exercise that power.
It has come to our knowledge that Skrill has extended its role as an iGaming and forex/binary options affiliate with email marketing. Promoting one service or product, or another via email has provenly been one of the most cost-effective marketing approaches. And according to marketing specialists, email marketing has been among the advertising methods that are most likely to evoke a desired response from customers.
The question of whether it is morally acceptable for a financial organization to use its customers’ emails and related data to promote gambling and trading options and thus make a profit for itself emerges once again. Gambling and forex/binary options trading are activities that customers should engage in by their own will and only if they are well-aware of the risks that these may carry if engaged in irresponsibly.
Promoting a Rogue Gambling Brand
A more careful look at Skrill’s Exclusive Offers section showed us that it promotes some of the most popular gambling brands within the iGaming space. However, it also promotes a gambling operator that has been heavily attacked by the international gambling community for the use of pirated software at its casino.
Burnbet, an online casino and sportsbook operator, supposedly licensed in Curacao, has been listed as rogue by Latest Casino Bonuses (LCB), Casinomeister, and other advocates of the fair provision of online gambling services. Of course, they all provided evidence that the operator has been working with unauthentic software, luring players into wagering money on fake Novomatic, EGT, and Aristocrat slot titles. And as it can be seen from the below screenshot, Skrill has placed Burnbet among its top suggestions both in its casino and sports betting bonus sections.
As LCB has recently made it known to the general iGaming public, Burnbet owners have not removed the pirated software and have not handled the well-deserved criticism in an appropriate manner. LCB has been one of the most widely respected iGaming affiliate networks for over a decade now and the people behind it have considered it their duty to expose a rogue casino. Instead of taking any actions to clear its blemished reputation, Burnbet decided to approach the matter by showering the LCB’s team with multiple death threats.
Why would Skrill, an established online payment services brand, would want to have anything to do with a rogue casino? This is a question we would like to get an answer to from Skrill itself. In general, the iGaming affiliate community is one that pursues the highest of standards both for itself and for those who consume the services it promotes. However, it seems that Skrill is either not aware of that unspoken rule, or is simply carelessly turning its back to it.
