Inside Asian Gaming

March 2012 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 37 GPI bring to market, there are going to be even more people trying to figure out a way to copy it. So it’s important to constantly bring to market new [security] features and new methods of [counterfeit] detection. Highly customised moulds can provide the best of both worlds. That’s especially important in Asia where the amounts of money involved in casino transactions are so significant. So we’re being very aggressive in what currency products we’re developing and making sure that the chip aesthetics also function as an authentication tool because the first counterfeit detection point is the dealer. We don’t want to slow the game down by having the chips used in every buy-in or transaction manually checked. Creating a unique chip design can aid the dealers in quicker detection of potential currency security issues. Ideally, we want to create a situation where if a counterfeit chip is introduced, the staff can identify it visually and then use other methods to further validate whether or not it is authentic. The less intricate the chip, the easier it is to counterfeit. Plastic mould injection technology is commonplace across all sorts of industries, so the threshold for copying plastic-injection American-style chips has been lowered. So if you have access to moulded injection facilities, and you are trying to counterfeit a simple chip design, there isn’t such a big barrier for the bad guys. Highly customised chip moulds can help raise the bar again, especially when combined with new invisible security technologies. Can you tell us anything about these new security technologies? In the past few months we’ve been in the final phase of developing several new security features and nanotechnologies that can be incorporated into the chips and inks, and we’ll be debuting several of these new options shortly at G2E Asia. They’re significant a d v a n c e m e n t s from features like the standard UV pigments [security measures that show up when scanned with ultraviolet light] that have been used in gaming chips for years. Ten years ago these UV pigments were cutting edge, but now they have become widely accessible because they are used by so many other industries. So, we have heightened our focus on identifying emerging technologies with security applications and getting the exclusive rights to their use within gaming so that we can better control the chain of custody. For us, it’s a question of being able to incorporate one or more of these technologies into something as small as a chip, and ensure that the new feature provides reliable security at a cost point that makes sense. With live table gaming markets such as those in Asia that have massive money movement and are a high temptation for counterfeiters, anything we can do to secure casinos’ and players’money and also provide operational efficiencies really makes sense. We’re confident that the market will be impressed by the new items we’ll debut in May. Will smaller casinos be able to afford customised chips? One of the key things we’ve done—and something we showed at ICE—is to offer customisation at all price points. Not every casino in the world will want to invest in a six- or seven-shot custom chip design, so we’re also offering customisable options with fewer injection shots. So, regardless of the operation, they still have the option to choose more customisable currency. We’re enthusiastic about the feedback and interest we’ve gotten so far, and so even though traditional American-style chip designs have existed with the same style types for many years, we’re still working on new and improved ways to refresh them and we are now also taking them to a different level. From vision to reality—Kirsten Clark with an illustration of GPI’s new six-shot chip