Sightline Invests $300M to Upgrade Slot Machines to Cashless

Sightline Payments will invest up to $300 million to bring cashless gaming to slot machines across the United States.

The project — dubbed “Project 250” and conducted in collaboration with Acres Manufacturing Company — is designed to facilitate digital payments technology at 250,000 slot machines across the country within 36 months, Sightline said in a news release Thursday (Oct 6).

It will let casino operators upgrade existing slot machines via Acres’ Foundation, bringing cashless gaming to patrons in as little as 16 weeks, the Las Vegas-based company said. Sightline says this investment will accelerate a shift to cashless gaming, giving millions of gaming customers access to digital payments.

See also: Sightline Payments Bets On Cashless Casinos For The Future Of Live Gaming

“For any payments innovation to accelerate having an infrastructure base layer of technology is critical to gaining widespread consumer adoption,” the release said. “To date, casinos in only 10 of the 44 states that offer gaming have launched cashless for their customers.”

According to Sightline, a major hurdle towards more casinos adopting cashless is outdated technology that is expensive to upgrade.

“This type of experience was seen around the adoption of the EMV chip and contactless technology at point-of-sale devices in retail stores around the country,” the release said. “Once retailers invested in new technology, customers quickly saw the safety and speed benefits of these devices.”

PYMNTS spoke last year with Sightline co-founder and Executive Vice President Omer Sattar about how the COVID pandemic turned years of planning for cashless casinos into a reality.

“We had been preparing for, building, integrating our network digital payments systems, [then in] May of last year we started getting calls, and it was go-go-go,” he told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster. “They all wanted to open up their properties [with cashless] options, so we ended up launching the first cashless casinos as early as October [2020] and have been adding them ever since.”

Last year brought the launch of Resorts World Las Vegas, the first new casino resort to open in that city in 12 years, and its new cashless value prop.

“This is a big deal,” Sattar said. “This is a $4.5 billion dollar casino resort [where] you can play in the entire property at any slot or any table entirely from your cell phone, you never have to touch cash if you don’t want to.”