Sightline Payments, a fintech company specializing in digital payments solutions for the sports betting and casino markets, announced the acquisition of Joingo, a leading mobile engagement and loyalty platform for the casino gaming industry.
Joingo serves more than 100 casino operators across North America and is the only app solution focused exclusively on the casino industry. Its patented mobile loyalty platform allows casino brands to reach their mobile users with highly personalized and interactive mobile marketing campaigns designed to increase reach, loyalty and revenue.
The acquisition gives Sightline the ability to offer customers a turnkey cashless gaming solution as well as a broader suite of products to help North American casinos enhance loyalty and personalization for customers, and drive increased visitation and loyalty for properties.
“This acquisition positions Sightline to provide a more robust digital payments experience in casinos,” said Joe Pappano, CEO of Sightline Payments. “We know that enhancing a guest’s mobile experience is the key to cashless gaming adoption in casinos. We welcome Joingo’s talented team to Sightline to further strengthen our ability to empower the digital transformation of the consumer experience.”
“Joining forces with Sightline gives us access to significant resources and capabilities to accelerate our product development initiatives and deliver the most robust and seamless cashless solution for land-based casinos in the industry,” said Mike McManus, CEO of Joingo. “Joingo and Sightline Payments share an impressive roster of common clients in the gaming space, and today’s announcement will deliver powerful value-added benefits to those clients, and many others as we move forward.”
On April 1, Sightline announced the completion of a $100 million funding round to help build out organizational capabilities including people, systems, technology and marketing, which helped fund this acquisition. Strategic investors participating in the round included Cannae Holdings, Genting Group, Point Break Capital, Searchlight Capital Partners, Shift4 Ventures, Walter Kortschak and Vectr Ventures.
“Think of it as a marketing mobile platform that now we’re able to embed cashless,” Pappano told CDC Gaming Reports during a recent interview. “We can better drive consumer engagement, understand all the touchpoints of what they’re doing with that mobile app, provide real-time messaging and rewards, and leverage that safe, secure payment ecosystem for moving money in and out of a wagering account. It’s a perfect fit to create this vertically integrated solution.”
Sightline said it chose Joingo because of the company’s “entrepreneurial spirit.”
“The cultures are very similar,” Pappano said. “We sat down and look at various mobile providers, some that support the gaming industry and some that do not. The alignment of the culture, the people, the innovative spirit, how they operate with a sense of urgency, there was great clarity and a vision… The architecture of (Joingo’s) platform is scalable with tremendous flexibility. They just understand the gaming and entertainment market.”
With integrations into all major casino management system providers—Joingo, point-of-sale systems including Shift4 and Freedom Pay, and with financial services leader NRT—Sightline provides an end-to-end product in its Play+ suite.
