Well, welcome, everyone. I'm Ed Nigro, the Executive Chairman of GBank Financial Holdings and GBank, and with me is Ryan Sullivan, the CEO and President of both. And I know you've gotten our press release, or I believe you have, because of your attendance on the call, and you probably have many questions. So I want to center some comments, and we'll take questions after our comments about why the 32.99% deal, and why now? Well, it was, as you know, we made an application to the FDIC to acquire BankCard Services or BCS. And I need not repeat all the reasons why we wanted to buy BCS and why we felt it was important.
But I believe it's also important, and many of you may know as banking investment experts, and may have been following the FDIC recently and many of you by through the FDIC subscription. But the FDIC is coming out with a new SOP on bank mergers, on all mergers. And this has interestingly changed the horizon a little bit for us, too. Maybe not just more than a little bit. But without digging too deep into it, a couple of things that this new SOP does, it makes all acquisitions subject to the Bank Merger Act, even if a bank is buying a non-bank. And a bank buying a non-bank happens to be a particular additional complication to any application because an insured depository institution buying a non-insured depository institution always draws additional attention.
But also by coming under the Bank Merger Act, every acquisition, regardless of its size, has to meet all the statutory requirements of the Bank Merger Act. Without getting into a long, laundry list of activities of the FDIC, when I—not laundry list of them, but the laundry list of our application, the requirements under our application dramatically increased, and we saw an extended timeframe for the possibility of this occurring. Plus, there were new issues raised with respect to the application and its permissibility of the transaction itself. So we reached out and actually had Rodgin Cohen, he's the senior chair of Sullivan & Cromwell, advise us on the regulatory side.
And one of the things he pointed out to us very early on was that your application is, without looking at the size, is very complex and will require a great deal of work to achieve, in his opinion. He said, "Have you ever considered a minority interest?" And I said, "Yes, we know of the 4.99% rule under the FRB." And he advised and said, "Actually, you also have and can acquire up to 32.99%, with no application to the Federal Reserve, just notification, as long as it's non-voting and non-controlling on each side." That became a much more interesting possibility than a less than 5%, acquisition.
As a matter of fact, 32.99%, which would be doable immediately, basically as fast as the bank and BCS, as the holding company, rather, and BCS, we put the deal together, and the independent committee was immediately asked to review this. They approved it. We also had both boards look at doing it. We approved it, and we then put together, actually with Rodgin Cohen. He notified the FRB already that we were going to do this acquisition. And I notified the FDIC, and this both happened Friday, last Friday, that we were going to be withdrawing our application to acquire BCS. Now, as we discussed it with counsel, this, and as we've seen, even normal bank-to-bank acquisitions and mergers have been taking 18 months.
We really recognize that we could be sitting here a year from now without knowing whether this would be approved or not, and a year from now in the world of technology is a long, long time. And then, if we had the opportunity to acquire 32.99% immediately, that doesn't mean we can't return later for the full acquisition. So we're keeping that option open. Just because we're withdrawing this application, doesn't mean we won't do another. But we also recognize because of the extraordinary amount of work that would be required to respond to the Bank Merger Act and all the statutory requirements, which all fell on Ryan's and my shoulders to do. We're not a big bank with, you know, a whole division that does nothing but regulatory assessment.
We do so the most of the heavy lifting in respect to these applications. This was done in view of the fact of what is going on with BCS, BankCard Services. Now, one could argue that what is going on makes it more valuable to complete the full transaction, but at the same time, as Rodgin Cohen pointed out to us, he said, "Ed, I'm not going to say your deal is zero. It's not 0% achievement." But he said, "Recognize it's not 100% either." And I thought that was very wise advice because I want to switch gears now and show you why we accelerated the decision to acquire 32.99% now, because of what is happening with the world right now and with BCS.
So I'm going to shift into the extraordinary activities that are going on right now. BCS has about--has nine companies right now, not to mention about, several more that we know of that are coming with new applications right away. nine new companies for our PPA and, pooled consumer account programs. These programs, as you know, offer remarkable consumer protection, and they also, the other thing they offer to these payments companies, is they are no longer handling the money. The digital transactions, they are, their platforms manage, but the funding is all managed by GBank. That's the way the pooled accounts work. They're bank-controlled accounts. They are notional for the benefit of the individual, so they are considered an individual account owned by the consumer. And they are afforded all the protections, the aggressive protections we do at GBank, for consumers.
All the regulations, the bank enforces those, not BCS, and we don't rely on the fintech or the payments company to enforce them, even though we require them to. We audit them, and we've literally, in some cases, forced them, if they want to stay active in the areas of consumer protection. But you know that. You know that they're a pooled player account, and that's why there's this great interest. There's something else that has just occurred, and if you look, and Ryan's going to address it a little, more than I am, but there's some fintech failures going on right now and some bank failures that are being caused by those under the banking-as-a-service. And he's going to talk about that a little more in depth.
But having said that, we are seeing because VCS was founded by bankers on the principles of consumer protection and on the principle of very sound policies and procedures, we're not like other fintechs that are out there and develop great ideas but are not bankers, and rely on banks through service, through provider agreements to manage their accounts, although they're not really managing the accounts in some cases, as you'll see in some of these recent failures. So the desirability of the consumer-protected account managed by a bank and owned by a bank is increasing. But something else has happened. Another application of our VCS patents that we hadn't looked at before, real-time payments, RTP. Now, real-time payments are a product of The Clearing House.
Many of you know the Clearing House because they handle, really, they're the private company that handles the wire activity and all the ACH activity of about 50% of the transactions in the entire United States. $2 trillion a day, they settle. Well, they come out with RTP. As you know, it's not new. It started about four or five years ago, and there are many banks that have real-time payments, which has to occur between a consumer account to a consumer account. The same consumer moving money, which can be done on a real-time payments rails, which is Clearing House. Now, the Clearing House has also come out, most recently, towards the end of last year, with a RFP, a request for payment. Now, you, as the consumer, can order money, real-time payment out of your account.
But with RFP, you can now order the money back into your account. However, both accounts must be your account. So think of it for a moment now, if you have a platform provider and a payments company or a wagering company in gaming, and you have an account, if that company has our pooled player account system, then that is an individual account and not funds on deposit in that corporate account. So if you had the PPA, your customer would be able to move in a real request for payments and then do an RTP back to the consumer's account. What this basically means in player vernacular, I have my app, I've been wagering. I want my money in my account.
I hit the request for payment, or the RTP approval that I have with that account, and it's in five seconds, it's in my bank, 24/7. This is a solution that is another opportunity for our banking system that we have created between BankCard Services and GBank, where now all of our pooled player accounts and pooled consumer accounts are eligible for RTP or this new RFP. Now, there's only about 30% of the banks that are on the RFP platform, but there are two remaining large banks that were originally on it, got off, and now are coming back on within the next
three to six months. Why RTP is a really game changer for moving money on and off different applications, digital applications and digital solutions? Because it replaces ACH.
Of course, Trustly is very interested in ACH, which is very-
Now they're all turned off. It feels great.
So what occurred is what's occurring now is this is an opportunity we hadn't focused on. We hadn't focused on RTP. We had been focusing on the consumer protection aspects of it. Now, interestingly, on the consumer protection aspects of it, let's talk about a couple of other things that have happened right away. First of all, the Supreme Court, seven-two, deferred the CFPB's methodology of operations, that it's legal, what they do, how they collect their fines. And so this has, of course, invigorated the CFPB, and it should cause more people to be concerned about consumer protection.
Let's talk about something else, and I'm going to have Ryan talk a little bit more since he's a little more, he's more adept at discussing some of the detail than I am about the Synapse failure recently and its effect on Evolve, and effect on possibly many other banks. What happens when the fintech, where your payments app is and where all your funds are deposited, even though they say they may be deposited at a bank, they are held and controlled by the fintech. And if the fintech fails, you go into bankruptcy, your funds are gone. And all of a sudden today, they're finding over 10 million users that are going to lose, have the potential to lose all their money on this Synapse Evolve failure. This is just another reminder of why the PPA is important and what it can do for you.
Short of you opening up an individual account at a bank for every one of your every one of your applicants or every one of your users. So we think between RTP and RSP, we think between the failures that we're going to see out there in the banking-as-a-service product, because neither the bank nor the fintech did their job right, or many of the other things that the CFPB may address, that the timing for VCS and GBank is really important. And we're finding that the GBank brand, and why the GBank brand and the VCS, particularly the VCS brand, is so strong right now is because VCS, which one could argue, is a fintech company, but VCS was founded by bankers.
I founded VCS with other of our directors, and we founded it on a sound basis of banking, and that's why its consumers that it brings in, or its payments providers that it brings in, their consumers are really protected. And those companies are pre-vetted by VCS. VCS knows how difficult it is to become a vendor at GBank. It is difficult. You must have consumer compliance in place because... And we're not going to rely on you to do it. We're gonna make sure you do it, but we also do it. GBank does all its own consumer protection. It will not rely on someone else to do it. We cannot. We were guided by this and advised by this with the FDIC back in 2015 when we first started. So we're building all of these programs on a solid foundation.
Now, I could talk even more about another very exciting application for VCS, is that we're signing our first physical game, physical equipment platform. When I talk about physical equipment platform, they are going to be able to digitally load slot machines and digitally offload slot machines, and we'll have a PPA at GBank through VCS agreement. And this company will be the first slot machine company on the, not slot machine company, the first platform providing these services for slot machines that will be on the PPA, and this is going to happen within the next several months. So there's a great deal going on with VCS and GBank right now that are very exciting, as well as other projects that we have working. But we saw the timing.
We didn't want to be sitting here possibly a year or a year and a half from now, without having the process of acquiring VCS completed and all of these new programs in place. We believe that the 32.99% is a, is a very sound transaction and deal, and it provides and it will be completed within the next two weeks. There's just some housekeeping to the agreements that have to be done before they're all executed. But everyone has agreed to the transaction. I'd like Ryan to pick up another couple of aspects, and then I'll close, and then we'll open it to questions. And I think Ryan's assessment is, is very important to this whole process.
Great. Thank you, Ed, and good afternoon, everyone. As you have now read, and as we're discussing today, we're excited about the announcement of board approval of the non-controlling equity investments between GBFH and BCS. As Ed alluded to, this will be a very quick transaction, already approved and still will maintain our existing timeline, which you may remember, was Q2 of this year. So we expect to close this quarter. We believe this transaction achieves really all the key objectives and then also is sensitive to, as Ed highlighted, some of the important developments that we're seeing within our space and our clients on the PPA and gaming Fintech side.
And really, I think it puts us in a position that the company and the bank to continue to direct our efforts on creating value for you, our shareholders. And that really comes down to executing on our growth strategy, continuing our continued strong financial performance. And in the nature of this conversation here today, that means really working on growing our gaming fintech business and our related Visa Signature Credit Card. We're very excited with some of the early metrics we're seeing on that. And specifically working very closely between GBank and BCS on building and closing on what Ed alluded to is an expanding pipeline.
Now, if I might, I'm gonna back up and give a little bit of background because I think it really helps to provide some context of some of the news Ed alluded to that we've seen over these last weeks and months. That hopefully give you a better insight in terms of what we are and what we do via gaming FinTech, PPA, and PCA, and perhaps importantly, what we don't do. You know, specifically, I think it's important to understand the difference between a PPA, PCA account structure and our partnership with FinTechs, and how that varies and differs, in contrast to how most of these payment and FinTech consumer funds and accounts are held today, and that is through what is called an FBO account structure. FBO stands for, "for the benefit of." An FBO account structure is not new.
FBO accounts have existed in some form throughout my entire career, and they actually predate that. What has changed over the last several years is the utilization of FBO accounts in the Fintech environment. Currently, and we've seen some attention drawn to this issue over the last year, especially, there is some questions, and some very fair questions that are being asked of the growth of this industry, the growth of consumer accounts, the growth of consumer funds that are held in the FBO account structure, both from an industry standpoint and a regulatory standpoint as it pertains to the FDIC. So the FBO account structure is a majority of how these funds are actually being held by Fintechs today.
In many ways, it kind of drives the backbone of the banking as a service industry, as it has developed over these last few years. Neither GBank nor BCS is involved in banking as a service. So Ed touched on the important distinction between our onboarding of PPA and PCA clients, and the value of the structure that we, that, that we bring to all of our Fintech clients. As we think back to some of the questions and challenges that we experienced as an industry in March and April of last year, there was a couple of very important questions that were being asked at that time. Around that time, a couple of key questions with some high-profile failures were, how safe is your bank?
Are the consumers protected through FDIC insurance in relation to some of these Fintech and other related relationships? Obviously, very important questions. Without touching on the first one, how safe is your bank? I'm not gonna get into that. The answer to the second question, we believe creates a problem within the industry and also presents an opportunity for the PPA and PCA. Because the answer to the question, are consumers protected through FDIC insurance, through FBO arrangements? The answer is, it depends. And that's generally an unsatisfying answer when you're talking about billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of accounts. Most recently, we saw the news last week.
There was actually some build-up prior to last week, but, fairly high profile Synapse and some related banks that were associated with the current freezing of approximately 200,000 consumer accounts. Now, what those questions were being asked in March and April failed to, you know, continue on to the next steps, and these are also important questions. In terms of how safe is your Fintech, and then the follow-up question, what happens to your consumer accounts if the Fintech goes away through a chapter or bankruptcy or et cetera. As you are all aware, following the PPA and PCA story, you also know that there is a significant vetting with all of the Fintech partners that we bring onto that program, including due diligence that is vital before we process our first transaction with that particular Fintech.
What PPA and PCA does, we think it's a solution that now is starting to come up in and of its own, as the industry is understanding the potential risks that exist within the system. It perfects FDIC insurance at the consumer level. Because the PPA and PCA structure is not owned, controlled, or monitored by the Fintech. It is owned, controlled, and monitored by the bank, because these are individual consumer deposit accounts. So it clears up the FDIC insurance issue, but it also affords a number of other consumer protections that are part of what we expect as being an account holder on the U.S. depository account. Protection against unauthorized transactions under Regulation E. Protection of the consumer under unfair and deceptive acts and practices.
protection against and stringent monitoring at the bank level, covering fraud and protecting the consumer and the overall ecosystem as a result. And then also, we're seeing this come up more and more with our PPA and PCA consumers, because the bank owns, controls, monitors the data and the account structure, cybersecurity is now more important than it ever has been before. So as we think about the scalability and the growth potential of PPA and PCA, in light of our announcement today, it really puts our efforts back into meeting the needs of the PPA, PCA clients, and most importantly, their consumers. Ed?
Thank you, Ryan. I'm going to quickly close, but there were two things that I missed, in talking to you. Two other contracts in addition to those other nine, which we're about to sign. One very important one, just to show you the reach now that we have, is with a government platform provider that, we are in the process of, of, in the final draft of that agreement between BCS and this company, that is going to provide the digital solutions to a lottery service for, a state.
I don't want to mention which state, but we will be issuing a Visa prepaid debit card, which the state wants to put all of their payments over $600, instead of dealing with any cash anymore. They're going to use digital payments to a prepaid card, and that will be a Visa card issued by GBank. That is another program that we expect to go live, you know, in the very near future. Another one with RTP, we are moving really fast on RTP and RFP, and you won't hear many banks working with RFP. We are in the process of finalizing a triparty agreement between BCS, GBank, and the RFP, the RTP platform provider, who we have an NDA with, and we're going to sign the final agreement.
We're well down the road, and we hope to be the very first. Goal is launching RTP for gaming. And we believe we will be the first, but we'll see. So when I say there is a great deal going on, I think you can gather some of that from the momentum we're talking about. And these all go through the existing contract between BCS and GBank. And GBank is the only bank BCS is working with and only bank we shall be working with, because the beauty of this is that GBank is the only bank that knows how to manage PPA and PCA. And we are being recognized as being very good at what we do, very good in our compliance. Remember, we're not a banking-as-a-service. BCS has no access to the banking at GBank, nor do we ever want it that way.
So with that, I think we've covered so much, but we will certainly open it up to questions. And that's why we believe that 32.99% now. What's the old saying? A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Well, maybe that's almost the right math, but thank you, and we'll open to questions. Gosh, we were that good.
You know, because-
Ed, this is Brad. May I ask you a quick question?
Hi, Brad. Of course.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
Perfect. Can you just let us know what kind of the revenue run rate and expense run rate of BankCard Services is right now?
Well, the run rate of BCS-
Would, in sense-
In earnings and expense. Do you want to take that one, or me?
Yeah. Well, when you're talking about the run rate, let me explain a couple of things. When BCS does a PPA, BCS charges the PPA, you know, a minimum amount per month based on what we think the size of the program is. And they start paying a minimum fee, which ranges anywhere from, you know, around $10,000 a month, depending on their size, because BCS gets basis points, you know, from anywhere from 40-50 basis points for programs, you know, that it boards. So when we talk about the run rate at BCS, BCS has three of us that operate BCS.
I do, as you know, as the manager of the management company, and Hanan Sabri is our President and Chief Operations Officer, and we have a Chief Compliance Officer in James Russell, who's a certified compliance officer, a compliance officer. He's very good at what he does, too. So the BCS run rate has very little overhead. We don't have office rent. We operate strictly on the, you know, digitally, so to speak. We flow through probably when the volume gets large, 70%-80% of our revenue gets to bottom line. So the run rate right now with these new projections, we're, our new projections are coming out soon. We just updated some projections, but it's happening so fast. As soon as we give them our projections, it seems they change.
So let me give you an example. RTP... And there's zero RTP in gaming, because you can't move money instantly or real-time payments from a company account to a personal account. You can't do that. So all of these companies that are in gaming hold the money in their corporate accounts. We know that. But RTP, from the Clearing House, has $2 trillion a day in transactions. They do literally 50% of all the transactions and settlements for wire and ACH in the United States. And of that $2 trillion, only $500 million a day is RTP. And they say RTP is growing at 15% per quarter. And they just set new records in the first quarter of this year of RTP, and RFP, as just launching, will be one of the first, and we could be the first in gaming.
So when we talk about the run rate, as these clients come on board and these fees, you know, continue, and BCS will get a percentage, will get a load fee that'll vary, you know, from 40 or 50 basis points down to, you know, 20 or 10, depending on the volume. Very high volume people will get a much lower rate. I'm not sure it will go to 10, but certainly it'll stay in the 30%-50% range. So the revenue potential for BCS is really strong. And for the bank, the deposits, of course, are what we're really looking to generate. Many of you, you know, we admire Stride Bank , and I've, we've studied Stripe because they're the bank for Chime, and 91% of their deposits are non-interest bearing. And that's, you know, that's a good goal.
So when we talk the runway to BCS, we think that the profitability from the programs, but the beauty is, I think, is if you remember before we were talking about licensing agreements. We're way less focused on licensing agreements right now versus generating the activity for GBank. GBank is capable of handling millions of accounts. We've already proven that. We've already handled over 1 million accounts when we were in our Sightline heyday, with over about 700,000 prepaid cards issued with Sightline. That's down to about 250,000 cards right now. But with the advent of these. And remember, we have the Arkansas State Lottery program at BCS, and the Arkansas State Lottery program funding with a PPA, which was our first one in 2019.
So we are the foremost experts in managing player funds with the state of Arkansas, who sold their SBTech, who won their app, who won their RFP, that they needed them to hold the money, and SBTech said they couldn't. We were the ones who did that. Now, we see another state lottery saying, "Hey, we like this approach. We like this system." And we have people like Worldpay and I2C saying, "You got to talk to BCS and GBank." So the run rate of BCS can be, you know, substantially profitable.
I'll give you. I'll follow up with that, Ed, if I might. In terms of Brad, I know you're probably looking for a number. The anticipated run rate on an earnings standpoint from BCS as we've gone through this process in year one, you know, bottom line, after expenses was above half a million, so it wasn't hugely significant. Now, one of the things I will point out with this, the equity investment that we're announcing today, it will vary in terms of what that transaction would have looked like, because with a, with a, an acquisition of all of BCS, essentially all the revenues and expenses would run through the consolidated company. This is a non-controlling, non-majority equity investment, so we won't have consolidated PNLs. But to give you an idea of kind of $500,000.
Yeah.
You know, what the modeling looked like as we were exploring our options. And then also, as I pointed out, I would say that those assumptions didn't include how the pipeline has developed over the last 30 days.
These nine companies that didn't include any of the contracts I'm talking about, our projections didn't include anything of which I'm discussing today. And, I think that... And there was one point when you were talking that I thought was really relevant, and it'll come back to my mind in a second, Brad, but... So I think our numbers, that we had before on the projections, are irrelevant.
Got it. Okay. Thank you, gentlemen.
We accept.
The other point is why I was saying that we're focusing less on licensing, because, you see, here at GBank, we have developed all of our processes internally, all our consumer protection, all the management of these FBO accounts, all the management of millions of accounts that we've managed already. We've already processed $2 billion in payments through these, through GBank. We know we can handle a very large volume of business of managing these FBO accounts.
PPA accounts.
Yeah, well, the FBO accounts that hold the PPAs, which are bank-controlled FBO accounts. And we know how... If you read the Synapse failure, which you should all read, it's very important, because it talks about how these ledgers come down on these company-owned accounts and how, quite frankly, many of the banking-as-a-service providers just rely on the vendor that their ledger's correct.... There's-- We don't do that. We get a ledger for these accounts, but we have to settle them ourselves every day that we get a ledger. So we have the ability to manage. We-- The only time we may need another bank is if the deposits get so great. Remember, we have a recipient bank program ready to launch. That's why I mentioned Stripe. They have a great recipient bank program to push out deposits of Chime.
So we think that we're going to be able to develop this new pipeline strictly ACH.
One other point I'll bring up on that, Brad, is obviously, you know, the question about the run rate. But in my mind, as a banker in today's age, and what's been developing over the past year is the growth in deposits, which I think is that, that's a key focus of ours, obviously. And the original model had pretty nominal deposit growth over year one, up to about $50 million. So that, that's the part that I'm really excited to see, you know, how execution on the pipeline is gonna drive non-interest-bearing deposit growth within GBank.
We think, and without giving too much speculative forward-looking information, those deposit numbers are irrelevant, too. And we'll be updating those as we board these businesses. And remember, right now, they may be a small PPA startup that we have, but what-- they all want RTP. They see that as a distinct advantage in the industry. And you must... Here's the, the thing: In order for it to be RTP from their platform, they have to have a PPA account, because you're moving the money from their PPA account, which is their account of the individual, to the individual's bank account. That's why you can have RTP in RFP, because it's p- it's consumer to consumer, and unless you have that structure, you can't do it. Well, unless you have an individual account, you can't do an RTP.
Any other questions?
Yeah, I've got a question. Can you hear me?
Yes, hi, David.
Hi. Hi, Ryan. Hi, Ed.
Hi, David.
You may have said this, and I missed it, but can you just give us an update on the outlook for the transaction for all of the BCS? It sounds like you pulled the application, but will you resubmit the application, and what's the expected timing on that?
We have no plan right now to resubmit the application. What I said was, we can revisit it again in the, in the future. The future could be near term or long term. What we don't have the capability of doing, David, is exercising on all of this business we have, and Ryan and I spending all of our time trying to get this application through with the success factor of a percentile that is somewhere between zero and 100. But it's not 100, and it's not zero. So when we start to narrow that down... But suppose I said we had a 50/50 chance of doing it, and we're going to spend the next year. I think you understood that part, but your question is, will we go back to try to buy all of BCS?
Because we can get this on the table now, we don't have a plan of a date to resubmit an application at this time.
Gotcha. Okay, that's helpful.
Ed, Ryan, it's Chuck Reed. Can you hear me?
Yes, Chuck.
Yes, loud and clear.
It would, I think it'd be beneficial if you could maybe speak a little bit more about, you touched on the slot opportunity. How would it work? How would it manifest itself? Could you just talk about that a little bit?
Sure. A slot platform is a platform in which you can digitally load a slot machine. So you walk up with your phone to a slot machine. As far as the player is concerned, he's moving, let's say, he puts $500. Well, the company we're working with now, the average load on their slot machines that they do is $500. So they go up to the slot machine and load $500, and they play the slot machine. Unlike sports betting, slot machine activity is instant. You know, you get instant losses or instant wins. Actually, many people don't understand, but slot machines are the best bet in the casino these days. By far, the best odds for the player.
So they go to a slot machine, and they win, and they load the money on the back, on their app. And then, when they want their money instantly as RTP and RFP, they can instantly put it into their bank account, the checking account, which they originally took the money out of, either through ACH or they can reload. Wherever they want to move the money, I mean, they can move it from account to account instantly. So they hit a big jackpot on a Saturday, and they want the money immediately, in five seconds on Saturday, the money's back. The application, there are several applications out there in process, but they're very clunky and not many of them are working very well. We may have heard of Resorts World trying it.
We may have heard of, we know that Resorts World had tried, we know that, IGT has a program with, Station Casinos, but we know they're very limited and not as broadly used as they could be because of, some of the application process. This particular platform, we know very well, has been built from scratch, has been built with their own coding, has been built with their own processes, and we believe that it's going to be very successful. The real funding, as I've said before, the sports betting is one thing. The average sports bettor load is $100, $110. The average slot machine load is over $500. The slot... The gaming, the, the sports betting win in Nevada last year was $450 million.
The slot win in Nevada last year was $9 billion. $9 billion. We believe that if we launch this first slot program that works really well and has the PPA attached to it and RTP attached to it, there's going to be nothing like it in existence. And we think that it's a platform that would be very desirable. That's the significance of the slot machine for the real machine play. That's where the really huge, huge volumes of transactions are going to take place. Way bigger, way bigger than sports betting.
From a deposit standpoint, it would dwarf gaming deposits-
Yes.
related to sports wagering, correct?
Absolutely. Because remember, there's going to be an enormous float. Now, the float belongs to the player here and not the company, so the platform provider doesn't hold any money. And why this platform provider is very smart, is that they're doing much like... Remember when I talked about the Oregon State Lottery? The reason we launched our first pooled player account, was the Oregon State Lottery said to the platform provider, "Hey, you're going to hold all the wagering money." And they said, "No, we can't. We're not licensed to." Well, this application, this provider that we're dealing with right now, in their platform, they don't want to hold the money. They want the money managed and held for the consumer at a bank. That's us, through the PPA. And as if they have the PPA, they can have real-time payments, too.
So it solves all these problems of them having to be licensed to be a money service provider or... In essence, we believe that the gaming control people are going to love it. We know they're going to do, because the sports betting platforms that we announced with the PPA in, like in the state of Tennessee, regulators, once they heard that one of the platform that we were going to use with one of the wagering companies, which unfortunately, their launch was a little too late, but they immediately approved them when they said, "Wow, you mean you're not going to hold the state of Tennessee people's money? It's going to be in a bank." And they said, "Yes." And they said, "We love that." So this is a proven system that works.
It's a, it's a - the methodology works, and now to apply it to physical games, and I think that's the, the part that, that is, is really important. Now, Remember, I was in gaming for 17 years, too, so, so the understanding of how a slot machine works and how the hold and the drop and the percentage win works, and out of that, of the drop, how much of the drop is kept on hand in the machine. So, you know, in, in the terms of, of these slot machines, you know, a single slot machine or, we did an analysis on 150 slot machines. 150 slot machines would probably generate deposits of about $4 million a month on average. That's 150 machines.
Now, in the state of Nevada, there are 157,000 slot machines. In the rest of the United States, there are another 250,000 or 300,000 slot machines. Now, when we and I hate to sound like somebody, "Oh, we just need a small percentage of that to be part." Look, we'll get our market share legally with the implementation of this first application, in which they have all of these three working, the PPA and the RTP, RFP, and the digital platform provider not trusting their money, and the consumer protection that it offers. It has all the solutions in one, and we're going to launch it in a very few months with a really manageable program. Does that help?
It does. And I guess the last question I would have, if you think about the gaming operator, talk about the benefits to them of having an automated solution like this.
Well, you see, we've talked about the benefit to them, but the answer they got is that they want the float, and they're using the funds. They're using the consumer money, and they don't want to give that up, because once they go to a PPA, they don't touch the money. So all the benefits that we say, we say, "Well, that's fine, but we don't have that issue. Nobody's worried about us failing. Nobody's worried about us losing their money right now." Well, you know... You're gonna see with this Synapse failure, and you're gonna see with the 100 Fintech companies that are all gonna fail, that were attached to it, and you're gonna see tens and tens of millions of users that are gonna lose a very lot of money now. But I'll also refresh everyone's memory.
In 2009 and 2010, every gaming company in the state of Nevada was in bankruptcy except MGM. Well, not everyone, but vast majority.
They got pretty close. Yes.
They got pretty close. All the public companies were, most of them, not all of them. I don't want to make a quote that's, that's wrong, but I'm talking about the big ones. Caesars was in bankruptcy. Many of the other companies were in bankruptcy, and MGM came within two days of bankruptcy because they were developing CityCenter at the time, and then they, they got a big investor that came in. I'm not telling anything that isn't in the record, in the books. I was in gaming in 1981 and 1982, when we had our first really big recession in gaming, where the gross gaming win declined 11% year-over-year, compounded. It was very difficult times. Some of these companies are gonna fall by the wayside in sports wagering.
We've already seen some, but, you know, everyone looks at the big three, BetMGM, DraftKings, and FanDuel. And there are a couple others that are, that are pretty strong in back east, but you will also see that not many of them make money. Now, MGM has the strength of being this tremendous bricks-and-mortar casino, and of course, Bill Hornbuckle sits on our board of our holding company. And, you know, we really admire the strength of MGM as a bricks-and-mortar company. They're amazing. They're just absolutely remarkable, and we're very proud to have them as one of our very small clients in the prepaid card business, because we were the first. We actually launched with MGM in 2015 in the state of Nevada.
But, I think that you have the risk issue, you have the PCA platform issue, you have the RTP issue, you have a lot of failures you're gonna see in fintechs because... And you're gonna see banking as a service, I mean, they come under enormous scrutiny.
Yes.
And you're gonna see the CFPB going after the big payments companies. So we're, we're geared for some very strong growth, and that's why we felt it was very important to get 32.99% ownership of BCS right away. Any other questions? All right.
Okay.
Well, thank you, you know, and anything you want to email me or text or Ryan, you know, we'll be happy to respond.
Thank you.
Thank you all very much.