PokerStars, the biggest online poker website in the world has continued to focus its expansion strategy on the Latin American market. The Amaya Inc owned PokerStars has already signed some of the biggest sportstars in football greats Ronaldo and Neymar Jr from Brazil and tennis ace Rafa Nadal from Spain.
PokerStars is now continuing its push into Latin America by partnering with OXXO to expand in Mexico. OXXO is one of the biggest and most popular convenience store chains in Mexico and will help PokerStars strengthen its brand image and get access to millions of customers.
Online poker is legalized in Mexico but one of the main drawbacks in the country is a pretty outdated and conservative banking system. This inhibits operators like PokerStars from providing its online poker players with the usual options for depositing and withdrawing funds. By partnering with OXXO, PokerStars will now have access to over 13,000 stores across Mexico that will allow online poker players from Mexico to make direct deposits into their PokerStars account.
The popularity of playing online poker is that poker players have the option of playing whenever they want from the comfort of their own home. This is severely restricted in Mexico because the options for online banking and credit card usage are extremely limited within the country. As a result online poker players find it difficult to make deposits and withdraw their winnings.
PokerStars has set up a voucher based system that will allow online poker players in Mexico to login to their account, generated a valid voucher and then use it at an OXXO store to fund their account. OXXO will notify PokerStars of the deposition and within 24 hours the players account will be credited. While this is still a cumbersome process, it is nevertheless a safe way for deposits to be made.
While Mexico’s banking industry is still behind the times, Goldman Sachs as rated Mexico as a “Next Eleven” country. This basically means that Mexico is expected to become one of the leading economies in the 21st century and PokerStars wants to position itself strategically to take advantage of the market when the economy starts to grow.
PokerStars is confident that its collaboration with OXXO will help it grow its business in Mexico as the online poker company has already experimented with this business model in Europe with Ukash deposits in local stores.
