Fabio Aufiero of LAG Merchant Group on Building Payment Resilience in iGaming
Fabio Aufiero, Chief Operating Officer of LAG Merchant Group, works at the intersection of banking, payments and the operational demands of high-risk industries such as iGaming. Through its network of banking, EMI and financial partners, LAG helps operators navigate payment infrastructure, compliance and access to financial services across multiple markets.
In this CasinoRank Interview, Aufiero discusses why payment resilience has become a strategic priority for operators, from eliminating single points of failure to balancing faster transactions with stricter compliance. He also explores AI and tokenisation, scalable payment infrastructure, and why the future may depend less on offering more payment methods and more on managing banking, risk, compliance and player experience effectively.
LAG Merchant Group sits between iGaming operators and a network of banks, EMIs and payment partners. What are operators asking for now that they were not asking for even two or three years ago?
Fabio Aufiero: What has changed most is not simply the number of products operators want, but the level of resilience they now expect from the outset.
A few years ago, the main priorities were access to a reliable bank account and stable card acquiring. Today, operators ask much broader and more strategic questions: What happens if a bank changes its risk appetite? Can we continue processing if an acquiring route is disrupted? How quickly can we enter a new market without rebuilding the entire payment infrastructure?
From our day-to-day work at LAG, we see operators looking for multi-jurisdictional banking, local payment methods, instant settlement, Open Banking, virtual IBANs and, where regulation permits, crypto-friendly solutions. Just as importantly, they want a partner who understands the compliance expectations behind each of those services.
Payments are no longer treated as a back-office function. Operators understand that a failed deposit, a delayed withdrawal or a sudden banking disruption can immediately affect player trust, retention and revenue. Payments have become a strategic part of the business.
What does real payment resilience look like beyond simply having a backup provider?
Fabio Aufiero: I often say that simply naming a second provider does not create resilience. A backup is only useful if it has already been onboarded, integrated and tested before a problem occurs.
Real resilience means building an ecosystem in which banking, acquiring, treasury management, compliance and risk management work together. The operator should understand which routes can be used, what the limits are, how funds will be settled and what compliance requirements apply before disruption happens.
In practice, payment disruption in a high-risk industry is not a question of if, but when. When it happens, an operator should not have to stop accepting deposits or delay withdrawals while looking for a new solution. The infrastructure should already allow transactions to be rerouted, acquiring channels to be switched or alternative banking relationships to be activated with minimal impact.
For me, resilience is about preparation. It means removing single points of failure before they become an urgent commercial problem.
Your offering connects traditional banking channels, SEPA, SWIFT, card acquiring, crypto and Open Banking. Where do you see operators making the biggest mistake when trying to combine too many payment options at once?
Fabio Aufiero: The most common mistake is adding payment methods before defining what problem each one is supposed to solve.
More options can look impressive commercially, but every additional payment rail brings its own settlement cycle, reconciliation process, fraud exposure, compliance obligations and technical requirements. Without proper orchestration, the complexity can quickly become greater than the value delivered to the player.
We regularly see that the best-performing payment ecosystems are not necessarily the ones with the longest list of methods. They are the ones designed around actual player behaviour, geography and transaction patterns. A solution that performs extremely well in Northern Europe may have very limited relevance in Latin America or Africa.
The objective should not be to offer everything. It should be to increase successful deposits and withdrawals, while keeping risk and operational complexity under control.
For players, payments are often judged by speed, reliability and local familiarity. How can operators improve the deposit and withdrawal experience while still meeting the stricter controls expected by banks and regulators?
Fabio Aufiero: Fast payments and strong compliance should not be treated as opposing objectives.
Players expect deposits to be immediate and withdrawals to be completed without unnecessary delays. At the same time, banks and regulators expect robust customer due diligence, AML controls and transaction monitoring. The key is to apply those controls intelligently and proportionately.
Operators can improve the experience by completing as much verification as possible early in the customer journey, automating routine checks and using real-time risk indicators to identify the transactions that genuinely require additional review. This allows legitimate players to move through the process smoothly, while higher-risk activity receives the appropriate attention.
Technology is important, but communication matters as well. When a withdrawal requires further checks, the player should understand what is happening rather than being left without an explanation. The strongest operators combine speed, transparency and strong governance.
LAG has highlighted AI and tokenisation as part of the next phase of iGaming payments. Which use cases are already solving practical problems today, and which ones still need more maturity before operators can rely on them?
Fabio Aufiero: AI is already delivering practical value. We see clear use cases in fraud detection, transaction monitoring, onboarding, behavioural analysis and operational efficiency. In particular, it can help teams identify unusual patterns, prioritise alerts and review large volumes of data much faster than a purely manual process.
Tokenisation is also solving a very real problem by reducing the exposure of sensitive payment data and improving security across the transaction journey.
Where the industry needs to remain realistic is around fully autonomous compliance decisions. AI can support a decision and make the process faster and more accurate, but accountability cannot simply be transferred to an algorithm. In a high-risk environment, experienced people still need to understand the context and take responsibility for the final decision.
My view is straightforward: technology should strengthen human expertise, not attempt to replace it.
Many iGaming businesses want faster onboarding and access to more markets, but financial partners need confidence in the operator’s compliance, transaction monitoring and risk profile. What separates an operator that is ready to scale from one that is moving too early?
Fabio Aufiero: You can normally tell quite early whether an operator is genuinely ready to scale.
The strongest operators are transparent, well prepared and able to explain their business clearly. They understand their customer base and transaction flows, maintain proper compliance procedures, monitor activity effectively and can provide banks and payment partners with consistent information and supporting documentation.
Operators that are moving too early often focus on licences, markets and volume, but have not yet built the operational structure needed to support that growth. When basic questions about source of funds, player geography, payment flows or risk controls cannot be answered clearly, financial partners will naturally become more cautious.
Transaction volume alone does not make a business scalable. Sustainable growth requires governance, preparation and the ability to give financial partners confidence. Compliance is not an obstacle to expansion; when it is properly built into the business, it becomes one of the main reasons expansion is possible.
Looking ahead, will the strongest payment providers in iGaming be those with the most payment methods, or those that can better orchestrate banking, compliance, risk and player experience into one stable infrastructure?
Fabio Aufiero: The number of payment methods will become less important than the ability to manage them properly.
Most individual payment products can eventually be replicated. The real competitive advantage is the ability to connect banking, acquiring, Open Banking, treasury management, compliance, fraud prevention and local payment methods into one stable infrastructure.
From an operator’s perspective, the value is not simply having many providers. It is having visibility, clear responsibility and the ability to keep the business operating when one part of the ecosystem changes. Regulation will continue to become more demanding, technology will continue to evolve and player expectations will continue to rise.
The strongest providers will be those that make this complexity manageable for the operator. Ultimately, the best payment infrastructure will not be the one with the largest catalogue; it will be the one that delivers consistency, resilience and trust every day.