Choosing a provider

Decide two things before you shortlist

Almost every shortlist in this category is assembled before either of these is settled, which is why the calls that follow compare suppliers answering different questions.

• Who holds the ledgerThe wallet of record sits with you or with the supplier, and almost every other answer follows from that one. A shortlist assembled before this is settled is a shortlist of suppliers answering different questions.
• How much of the launch you want to runConfiguring a platform and being handed a running one are different purchases with different first quarters. Neither is better; picking late is what costs.

Both decisions and what each one commits you to are set out on white label, turnkey, or API.

What actually differentiates suppliers

Five things, and they are all boundary questions rather than feature questions. A supplier who can answer these precisely is telling you how they think, which is more predictive than anything on a specification sheet.

• Whether they can separate who performs an identity check from who enforces the gate that requires it. Two different jobs, and most suppliers answer as though they were one.
• Whether they distinguish determining where a player is from applying rules to a location somebody else determined. The word covers both purchases and only one of them is usually on offer.
• What their audit retention actually is, in days, and what exists on the route where they never see the transaction.
• Whether a catalogue count has a method behind it — what counts as a title, what counts as a studio, and when it was last counted.
• What they will put in writing about the end of the relationship, before you are anywhere near it.

What does not

• Catalogue size past the point where your lobby can show it. Beyond that the number is measuring the supplier's integrations rather than your product.
• The length of a feature list. Everybody's list contains the same words, because the words are free.
• Vocabulary that sounds standardised. Turnkey, white label, seamless and platform have no settled meanings in this category, which makes them useless for telling two suppliers apart.

Three answers that should end a conversation

Not because the supplier is bad, but because the answer tells you the conversation is not going to get more precise than this.

• A supplier who cannot tell you who performs verification and who enforces the gate.It means either they have not separated the two, or they have and would rather not say which side of the line they are on. Both are answers.
• A supplier who sells geolocation without saying whether they determine a location or enforce against one you give them.The two are sold under one word at similar prices, and the difference decides what your platform still has to build.
• A supplier who quotes a catalogue or studio count with no method behind it.A number nobody can reproduce is a number that was chosen. Ask what counts as a title and when it was last counted; the pause tells you the rest.

How to run the evaluation

• Settle the two decisions above. Written down, agreed internally, before a single call.
• Write the questions down and send the same set to everybody, in writing.
• Record who answers in writing, who answers on a call only, and who does not answer. That record is data about how the relationship will run.
• Ask the uncomfortable ones last, when you already know what a comfortable answer sounds like from that supplier.

The questions themselves, grouped and ready to send, are on the supplier evaluation checklist. The commercial shape to ask each supplier about is on our pricing page, and the questions worth asking about the end of a relationship are on the migration page — including the two we have not settled ourselves.

Where we would lose

Where we are the wrong answer. Every one of these is a verified position rather than a modest disclaimer, which is why the section costs nothing to publish and would cost a competitor something to copy.

• You need a supplier who runs your acquiring. We supply no payment rails on either route; the one exception is a crypto payout rail on the managed platform.
• You need a supplier who performs identity verification. That check is yours on both routes, arranged with your own provider — we hold no part of it.
• You need a supplier who determines where a player is. You determine the state and pass it to us.
• You need transaction monitoring you can point a regulator at. Ours is people noticing and telling you, which is worth having and is not a control.
• You need per-currency game mathematics. There is one math model per title and no divergence between currency contexts, by design.
• You need the front-end source assigned to you as standard. Ours is licensed for the life of the engagement, with a handover negotiable and not free.

If one of those is a requirement rather than a preference, the answer is a different supplier, and you will find that out faster from this list than from a call.