CueSports International (CSI) organizes amateur and professional pool tournaments around the world. The company partnered with Payment Labs in preparation for one of its biggest events – the World Pool Championship in Las Vegas. Each year, the tournament attracts thousands of participants from across the globe to compete for over $1 million in prize money. 

Historically, distributing prizes to the winners was an extremely manual process. The organizers had to manually collect tax information from the players, verify it, and issue paper checks within 24 hours. They faced issues like check-washing and payees not being able to cash the checks. CSI knew there must be a better way to handle prize payouts.

Enter Payment Labs with a solution purpose-built for automating complex global payout workflows. With it, the entire process of paying out over $1 million to almost a thousand winners at each World Pool Championship became easy and automated, delighting the winners with fast, digital payments through their preferred digital payment methods.

Payment Labs sent its staff on-site to provide any payment support that players needed. Then, at the end of the year, CueSports International saved time and resources on tax preparation, which included filing on time, making end-of-year tax forms available to all the winners, and remitting any withholdings to the IRS. 

CSI expanded the use of Payment Labs to other events they organize globally. Thanks to their new payout infrastructure, CSI is fully compliant with prize payout regulations and provides winners with an easy-to-use and secure payment platform where they can choose their preferred payment method. Preparing tax documents and remitting withholding is handled on autopilot and participants can get 24/7 dedicated support with any payment issues.