Ian McKinnon is Head of GTM & Product Marketing at TESTA, a crowdsourced QA testing platform built specifically for the iGaming industry. TESTA connects operators and providers with a global network of verified testers to assess products using real people, devices, payment methods and market conditions. Its work spans QA, user journey and payment testing, compatibility and performance testing, as well as market research and competitor benchmarking.
In this CasinoRank interview, McKinnon discusses how TESTA is moving beyond basic market-readiness checks to identify friction across the real player journey, from payment and withdrawal performance to verification, streaming and post-click conversion. He also examines testing across Brazil and Canada, grey-market exits, affiliate performance, Watch & Bet implementations and emerging prediction markets, highlighting the role of continuous, in-market testing as operators and suppliers compete on increasingly detailed aspects of the player experience.
Brazil’s PIX deposits are now reliable across all four operators, shifting gaps to withdrawal speed and streaming. When a market matures past a baseline like that, does it change what you’re selling there?
Ian McKinnon: Yes, and no. It’s true that once a feature works consistently, it lessens as a differentiator, but TESTA clients go deeper than the snapshot testing we’re reporting on there. They monitor payments over longer periods of time, find patterns and fix issues as they arise. But in Brazil, yes, at those two moments in time, we found that across the two rounds of testing we ran before and during the World Cup, every PIX deposit succeeded.
That tells us the leading operators have largely solved the first step in that market. So then testing turns to other customer journey differentiators: how quickly can a player withdraw, when does verification appear, and can they watch and bet without the stream failing or becoming unavailable?
That changes the work from checking basic market readiness to measuring how operators compare under real conditions. In Brazil, Betano remained the strongest overall performer, while the differences elsewhere were often about speed, consistency and trust rather than complete failure.
But like I said, over longer periods of time, continuous testing is the way to go. A payment method may remain stable or it may break down; and then streaming performance can also change between events, networks or devices. In a mature market, operators need to always be in the know about where current points of friction are emerging and whether competitors are handling it better.
Your latest case study found affiliates can lose revenue to broken deposits, unclear bonuses and weak CRM after the click. Are performance marketing agencies becoming a serious testing market for TESTA?
Ian McKinnon: They are becoming a serious market for us. Affiliates and agencies are judged on the traffic they deliver, but their visibility often ends when a player reaches the operator’s site. If registrations or deposits then fall short, it can be difficult to establish whether the problem was traffic quality, the offer or the player journey.
Our case study followed that journey through registration, payment, bonus use, first play and seven days of follow-up communication. It found several small points of friction rather than one obvious failure. Some payment methods failed, some players abandoned deposits because they lacked confidence, and newer players struggled to understand or claim bonuses.
That information helps an affiliate assess partners and campaigns using the experience players actually receive. The operator still has the ability to fix the product, of course, but it does not have to be the only buyer. Agencies can use testing to protect their own performance, improve discussions with operators and decide where their traffic is most likely to convert.
Your ICE Barcelona session examined whether grey-market exits hold up in practice. What’s the biggest gap between an announced exit and what your testers find?
Ian McKinnon: The biggest gap is usually between corporate intent and what remains accessible through the full distribution chain. A company may make a genuine decision to leave a market, but players can sometimes still find its games through an operator, an older integration, a reseller or another platform relationship.
From the player’s side, those distinctions are invisible. The content either loads and can be played, or it cannot. That is why we test from within the market after an exit has been announced, using local connections and real player journeys.
This is not always evidence that a company has deliberately ignored its commitment. It often shows that visibility and control weaken as content passes through several technical and commercial layers. But regulators and licensing authorities may still care about the outcome.
An exit therefore needs verification, not just a policy change or a press release. Companies need a clear record of where their content remains available and a process for following that evidence back through the distribution chain.
TESTA published PlayAlberta testing in July, and you’ve spoken about Canada’s revival. Are you actively building testing depth there, or is it still early?
Ian McKinnon: We are actively building depth there. Canada is particularly interesting because it is not one uniform market. Ontario has already established a competitive regulated model, while Alberta is moving through its own transition and players arrive with habits formed on offshore sites.
Our PlayAlberta test showed why local depth matters. Registration, navigation and browsing generally worked, but six of seven testers could not make a deposit. The failures varied across banks, payment methods and individual accounts. One tester completed the full deposit, live bet and withdrawal journey, proving the system could work, but not consistently enough for every player.
Those are conditions that cannot be understood properly with one account or a test environment. We are building access to testers, devices, banks and payment methods so that we can reproduce that variation. Alberta is an immediate focus, but the wider opportunity is to help operators understand Canada province by province rather than treating it as a single launch plan.
The Stats Perform Watch & Bet study found only one of five sportsbooks delivered the full feature suite cleanly, despite identical underlying technology. How central is exposing that gap to your pitch now?
Ian McKinnon: It is an important part of the conversation because buying the same technology does not produce the same player experience. In that study, all five sportsbooks offered streaming, but only four had highlights, three allowed players to add a selection from inside the stream, and one offered interactive in-stream statistics.
The supplier had provided the underlying capability, but implementation, configuration, device support and local conditions all affected what the player received. That distinction matters when an operator is trying to understand whether a problem belongs to the technology, its own integration or the environment in which the player is using it.
Our role is to make those differences visible and reproducible. We test with local accounts, real wagers, mid-range devices and ordinary mobile connections, then compare the evidence across operators and markets. That gives both the operator and the supplier a more useful conversation. Instead of saying that streaming “doesn’t feel right,” they can see which feature failed, where it happened and under what conditions.
TESTA tested prediction market platforms during the April NFL Draft. Is that a serious new commercial line, or still early exploration?
Ian McKinnon: It is early as a sector for us, but the testing requirement is serious and closely related to work we already do. During the NFL Draft, we tested BetUS, Polymarket and Kalshi with users in Ohio, timing the journeys around the live event and covering location checks, deposits, market access and transactions.
Prediction markets compress everything into a very short window. If a bank blocks a payment, location verification fails or the platform slows down, the user cannot simply complete the same transaction later. The market may have moved or closed. Testing also has to account for the exact jurisdiction and the way the platform behaves as live demand changes.
That makes real-time, local testing a strong fit for our network. We now have a repeatable approach that can be used around drafts, elections, major sports events and other time-sensitive markets.
We are not treating prediction markets as a replacement for our core iGaming work, but we do see them developing into a meaningful commercial line as the platforms and their regulatory responsibilities grow.
With a background in digital media and a keen eye for emerging technologies, Ronaldo bridges the gap between players and platforms through clear, insightful reporting to the iGaming industry.
