Q&A: kwiff CTO on developing tech and global expansion

Following a period of in-house development and product refinement, kwiff is ready to attract a new wave of customers with its emphasis on experience and new features.

Most known for its supercharge feature, where any bet can be kwiffed, the firm has now expanded into new gamification areas as it targets further growth. Bolstered by a growing tech team and an appetite to explore automation, kwiff is taking tech to heart as it looks to claw out market share

Here, chief technology officer (CTO) Nick Maroudas tells EGR about the operator’s improvements across UX and UI, its plans for a potential push into B2B and its international aspirations.

EGR Technology: kwiff have been developing a new backend platform in recent months, can you describe what it is all about?

Nick Maroudas (NM): kwiff was founded as a mobile-only, sports-only operator with the USP of being able to supercharge any bet, or being kwiffed. Fast forward to where we are today, we have multiple sports, as well as multiple platforms across iOS, Android and our Web App which allows people from all over to be able to access kwiff and betkwiff brands.

Now, along with any bet being supercharged, any eligible cash out can be supercharged too. With both these in mind, we believe we were the first to do those. It’s not a gimmick in terms of it being a promotional tool, it isn’t a bonus that just gets bolted on, it’s part of the whole ecosystem of the platform.

Across the app itself, we’ve tried to keep it generic across the three so if you are on iOS, Android or the Web App, you get the same unique experience. We’ve introduced the quick pulse, or the heartbeat of the app, which you see pulsing on the bottom of the screen which gives you a feeling something is going to happen.

We are trying to engineer a betting experience. It’s not gamification, it’s more about feeling and the experience of betting.

EGR technology: How has the tech team delivered these new features for the kwiff app?

NM: The heartbeat and supercharge features have been in for a while. In terms of the platform, it is quite lean. We have a lean tech and trading team nowhere near the size of anybody I know. We allow all the automation to happen within the technology itself.

I’ve seen a lot of reports of people claiming to have done new exciting things but I’m thinking we did it ages ago. We aren’t ones to shout about what we do but we have done a lot of spotting and guiding about how to approach tech.

EGR Technology: In terms of UX, how important are these new features in terms of customer engagement:

NM: It is really important. We have had good feedback from our customer base about it. They feel as if something is going to happen, and it engages them that little bit more. When we initially launched it was just a pulse (the heartbeat feature) and what we were able to see from the data was that people wanted to engage with it. We’re thinking about what else we can put in there.

We have a lot of data that drives the platform that we use, and we are using various feedback mechanisms within the apps to know what our customers want. There’ve been a lot of requests about what could be added to the platform, and we are trying to work some of them out.

EGR Technology: Where did the original idea for supercharging bets come from and how does it work from a tech side?

NM: Some of our founders had that as an idea. The idea was that any person and any bet could be supercharged; you didn’t need to reach a particular level. It was also meant to engineer some excitement and an entertainment factor.

How we handle it is effectively with bespoke algorithms that are in the platform that draw on many data points. We want to ensure there is no bias to the player or the sport and that is the slightly difficult part of the algorithm. Our data scientists have been working hard and trying to remove any bias that manifests because no algorithm is ever perfect.

EGR Technology: There has been an example of tech issues with the supercharge feature in the past, is this something you have to constantly battle against?

NM: That example [St. Ledger festival] was a one-off example. One of the things we have to ensure is constantly monitoring the platform and making it better each and every day. We’ve changed providers in terms of our logging software which provides us with a deeper view of what is going on all the time.

The other thing is changing some of our release processes to make it a lot more robust. There is continuous and automated testing ongoing now. If we rewind a few years ago, it was a little bit more manual. The introduction of “automation is everything” and anything that can’t be automated will get a good pair of eyes on it. That is where we have improved really. Sometimes technical things happen that are just out of our control.

EGR Technology: Do you think all operators will head down the automation route in the future and rely less on humans?

NM: I think they should. Having been at bigger organisations I know how difficult it is to get on and do things quickly and by being at a smaller operator it’s easier. To try and get rid of your legacy is probably the hardest thing to do. If you can remove or rework your legacy [code], the automation and the leanness come with it.

I think there is so little in it. If you look at trading across horseracing it is so tight, why would you trade it physically – let the algorithms get on with it. Why would you have 10 traders to do the job. Organisations have reasons for keeping traders but for us it is about how do we let the science and data guide that trading.

I’d advise bigger operators to do it, but other things get in the way. Looking at larger organisations like Flutter with the amount of M&A there and then you have many platforms to work on.

EGR Technology: What sort of new products and features are kwiff working on?

NM: We’ve done some more work on our Web App which has allowed us to have the ability to open up to an international market. There is a lot of language and currency support that has been added. As we acquire more licences, the platform is able to support multiple territories.

We’ve moved from being really focused on the UK market, to now having the ability as a platform to scale to handle something much larger. I think timing in terms of tackling the US market as a smaller operator is almost there, a few more tweaks to the product are necessary. We do hold an Irish bookmakers licence and a couple of African licences which we have just launched on, along with our UK licence.

EGR Technology: Are there plans for kwiff to offer its services via a B2B branch?

NM: We have the ability to do so. It is something the platform can offer and there has been a bit of work there to allow that. When we took the decision to move into multiple jurisdictions, we took the decision on how we could use a separate brand there.

B2B is not necessarily in our immediate aspirations right now but the capability exists for when the timing is right.

EGR Technology: What are your hopes and expectations for kwiff over the next 12-24 months?

NM: We have a product that is translatable worldwide and I would love for us to be in the US. The product would work well for an American market.As we have launched out in Africa now, we hope to bring betkwiff to a different international audience.

We would also like to continue to grow a bit more in the UK where we are best known for our kwiff brand.