Prize Payments Crosses Million-Dollar Mark With Improved Platform

LOS ANGELES, CA, September 24, 2020 – Prize Payments, the leading payment solution for esports and gaming, today announces they have paid out over $1.5MM in prize money with their newly revamped platform and have an additional $1.5MM in committed prize money for 2020.

Prize Payments delivered payments in 29 currencies to payees with an average delivery time of 43 hours. Their clients include companies endemic to esports such as DreamHack, Ubisoft, SEGA, LiquidDogs, and PG Esports, as well as Symphony Workforce, an organization seeking to empower youth who are just starting their careers.

“We’re proud to see established tournament organizers and publishers using Prize Payments to alleviate the strains of paying out large prize pools. Due to the COVID-19 lockdowns, we are seeing more online tournaments that have a focus on larger community participation,” said Han Park, CEO of Prize Payments. “This is resulting in a greater number of players winning money than in previous years. Getting these players paid out faster not only improves the relationship between tournament organizers and their players, but also builds a stronger gaming community.”

Prize Payments’ improvements to their platform include key features that make the user experience easier and shorten onboarding times for payees. These features include secure, simplified tax forms that are easier for prize winners to fill out, lower fees and foreign exchange rates, as well as end-of-year tax statements and 1099/1042 IRS e-filing for tournament organizers. All these new features reduce the friction in paying winners and automate the manual processes that are inefficient and time-consuming.

Additionally, tournament organizers can now import payee information via a CSV upload function and use a “submit all” function to payout players en masse. To eliminate fraud and improve oversight, tournament organizers can now opt for payment dual verification which entails having a user input payment information and a second user, typically an accounting professional or executive, approving those payments. Improved payment tracking has also been added to improve transparency on payment processing which highlights fees, tax withholdings (if any), and estimated time of delivery.

Platform updates list:

• CSV upload and submit all functionality to allow for a simpler way to mass import payment entries
• Dual Verification can be enabled for a Tournament Organizer to allow one user to enter payment information and a different user to submit payments
• Added tax module to allow payees to download tax forms directly
• Payees can now see their withholding rate before payment is processed
• Enhanced international tax rules to make sure US withholdings are correctly calculated and applied on a per tournament basis
• Added ability for payees to view their transactions in greater detail
• End of Year 1099-MISC, 1099-NEC, 1042-S Tax Statement generation and Delivery
• Lowering the majority of payment-related fees

The Prize Payments team is also working on Influencer Pay — a solution for influencer agencies to address the unique challenges in onboarding, compliantly collecting sensitive information from, and paying social media influencers and creators. Influencer Pay will feature the same level of compliance and ease of use as Prize Payments, but tailored to make high volumes of payments to an influencer base that varies between campaigns.