Open banking did something to gambling payments that no amount of card optimisation could: it removed the card from the deposit path. No scheme, no interchange, and no issuer sitting in the middle deciding whether it likes the merchant category today. For operators whose decline rates on cards run well above retail norms, that is not a marginal saving.
The catch is coverage. An account-to-account rail only works where the banks are connected, and connection depth varies enormously — excellent in the Nordics, solid across much of Western Europe, thin at the edges. A provider's coverage map and its usable coverage are different documents.
The second question is the payout leg. Deposits over open banking are near-universally fast; withdrawals depend on the receiving bank's clearing schedule, which the provider does not control. Providers that advertise instant payouts are usually describing the subset of banks where the scheme supports it.
Scores below weight fee transparency and settlement speed at 2.5 each, which favours these rails heavily. Regional coverage at 1.5 is what pulls the narrower specialists back down.
