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A high roller walks into the casino, ever so mindful of the constant surveillance cameras. Wanting to avoid sales pitches and other unwanted attention, he pays cash at each table and anonymously moves around frequently to discourage people who are trying to track his movements.
After a few hours of losses, he goes to the cashier and asks for a cash advance off of his credit card. The card tells the casino his name, but not much else. As is required by card issuers, the cashier asks for some other identification, such as a drivers license.
That license offers the casino a ton of CRM identification goodies, but the cashier is only supposed to glance at the picture and the name to verify identity and hand the license—and its info treasure trove—back to the gambler.
Not any more, at least if a Minneapolis company called Cash Systems Inc. has anything to say about it. The firm was recently awarded a U.S. patent for a device that can grab all of the data of almost any U.S. drivers license in seconds and instantly dump it into a casinos CRM system.
“The casinos spend millions of dollars in player-tracking cards so they know who their top players are in the casino,” said Chris Larson, Cash Systems COO. “The people taking out cash dont want to be tracked, dont want to be given promotions. Theyre not there for free buffets or anything like that.”