Are we post-pandemic yet? That’s a polarizing question and it really depends on who is asked. State leaders can’t even agree on what safety precautions should be taken as students head back to school. On a positive note, there has been a slight uptick in the number of people being vaccinated in recent weeks, but still only about half the country has been inoculated. From an economic standpoint, there are signs that things are improving or at least leveling, as measured by job additions during June and the U.S. unemployment rate holding steady around 5.9%.
For the most part, since the nosedive in March 2020 when the world started implementing lockdowns and travel bans, Wall Street has arguably played surprisingly little attention to the negative side of the pandemic. Case in point, major North American indexes are at or near record highs against the backdrop of a global viral outbreak that infected 195 million people and killed 4.2 million.
One thing is for sure, the world is going to be talking about "economic recovery" for years to come. Another near certainty is that the world has forever been changed with respect to online activity, from work to entertainment to shopping and back again. COVID-19 didn’t change anything per se; what it did was accelerate a trend towards digitization that was already firmly set in motion.
That is particularly true for online gambling, where companies like Royal Wins (CSE:SKLL) are re-shaping the state of the industry. Royal Wins is an innovative digital games studio pioneering skill game wagering and betting on mobile casual games. The Toronto-based company designs, develops and operates real money wagering games based on skill, rather than algorithmic odds that have been the staple of chance games throughout time.
In short, Royal Wins’ life-changing jackpots are not merely a matter of luck.
The world’s first licensed real-money, pure-skill gaming platform has artificial intelligence and other next-generation technology as the foundation of its portfolio that consists of 36 games (puzzles, action, arcade and more) available on iOS and Android within the appropriately named app Kash Karnival. The games are all designed under the premise of being fun and easy to learn, yet challenging to master, which underscores a stellar retention rate of 80 percent for Royal Wins’ user base of over 1.6 million players.
According to Royal Wins on Monday, the newest version of the Kash Karnival 5.5.3 app now includes Apple Pay for iOS users to purchase Kash Coin bundles to wager in casual games of skill. As the name implies, "bundles" are more than just virtual currency, they can include Booster Cards, which provide in-game advantages when redeemed, and Arcade Tokens, which are used for playing games to win non-cash prizes, including gift cards.
iOS users comprise 45% of total Kash Karnival users, or about 720,000 people. Onboarding Apple Pay overcomes one of the biggest challenges for online game operators: native payment processing that is intuitive to users. As such, the bundle benefits are expected to incentivize users to make larger Apple Pay deposits, which will bolster the top and bottom lines. "With the addition of Apple Pay for iOS users, Royal Wins is better positioned to achieve its revenue targets on the Kash Karnival app," said Peter Gan, President and CEO of Royal Wins in Monday’s news release.
The Apple Pay inclusion was part of a broader overhaul of the user interface that made entering games faster and betting more seamless. Gan added that he anticipates the updated user experience to catalyze growth as the team works on other operational efficiencies based on positive reviews from upgrades already implemented on other games in the Kash Karnival suite.
Shares of SKLL rallied around 20% on the news in Monday’s trade. With only a handful of trading days under its belt, the stock chart is still developing a new trading base, however catalysts such as Monday’s announcement could see the bulls trumpeting the bears in the not-too-distant future.
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