´Pagsmile is expanding in Latin America and it aims to enter Canada before the end of the year´: Juan C. Patiño, Pagsmile

Pagsmile is a PSP, a cross-border Payment Gateway, which allows several international companies to process their payments without having local entities in Latin America and then it deposits the money in the country the firms need, in the currency needed.

What do you think of the CGS Chile edition? How was the participation of your company? I know you were present at one of the conferences.

Yes, Sofi, the Country Manager of Argentina, assisted to a conference. The event has been super interesting. We know that in Latin America the topic of i-gaming and sports betting is growing a lot. We come from ICE London, which is very similar to this one, but logically, with other magnitudes, but the important thing is to see that more traction is generated, that we begin to have more players in Latin America, and I am talking about the players in the ecosystem, not the final player, and that is a very big opportunity for everyone, including PSPs, platforms, governments, regulatory issues.

How do you see the Chilean market with respect to the company's products?

It is very good, in fact we see that Chile is quite advanced regarding the digital payment system. The vast majority of the population in Chile is paying either with cards or bank transfers. It is the only country in Latin America that we see has the least use of cash payments, and that is very interesting, because that is what we want to achieve in a certain way, and that is thanks to the regulations that the country has and all the opportunities it brings, from laws and the government, which make interbank transfers free and instant, for example, unlike other countries where we are still struggling.

In which Latin American countries do you currently operate?

We are in Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Panama, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile and Brazil, which is our main market.

What about the payment process in the gaming and online gaming sector?

We at Pagsmile are basically dedicated to the whole issue of high risk, emergency risk, we consider everything that is sports betting, video games, all this type of industry in which we specialize, to be high risk. For that we have a fairly strict control regarding issues such as money laundering, KYC, etc. That implies knowing who we are dealing with in order to have a completely healthy business.

What are the company's next steps for the remainder of this year?

We are expanding. I think that for the rest of the year we should already have Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina, and in North America, we want to have Canada by the end of the year.

What other shows are they going to participate in?

Here in Latin America we are going to participate in PGS in June. I understand that there is another event in Brazil and also in Cyprus, both in June, too.

Where does the company come from?

The company is originally from Beijing. We were born in Asia and we started as a Marketplace, a free market for video games, and we had a lot of traction in Asia. And then the same companies that posted their video games on our Marketplace began to ask us if they could use the payment gateway that we had, and we said yes and started with one store, with two stores, and then we realized that the business mutated. We started out as a video game marketplace and now we are a payment gateway, so that whole journey has been quite interesting.

Finally, we hope that Latin American e-commerce and the entire industry will continue to grow.