Yaspa Partners with The Big Leagues for Open Banking Payments

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Yaspa enhances sports payments with new partnership

  • Yaspa has partnered with The Big Leagues to integrate Open Banking-based “Pay by Bank” deposits and withdrawals, according to Open Banking Expo.
  • The integration also adds automated player verification, aiming to reduce onboarding friction, Open Banking Expo reported.
  • Yaspa says its Intelligent Payments combines instant bank transfers with real-time account authentication, built on Open Banking and augmented with AI.
  • The Big Leagues says the focus is “trust, speed, and simplicity” for UK sports fans using prize draws and prediction games.

Yaspa has announced a partnership and integration with The Big Leagues, a UK sports prize draw and fan engagement platform, according to Open Banking Expo. The Big Leagues has implemented Yaspa’s Intelligent Payments solution to support fast “Pay by Bank” deposits and withdrawals, alongside automated player verification.

According to IT Brief UK, Yaspa is regulated by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

The Big Leagues launched earlier this year as a multi-sport destination for British fans, offering free-to-play sports prediction games and premium prize draws, according to Open Banking Expo. The prizes include “bucket-list sporting prizes,” such as VIP hospitality at the UEFA Champions League, the Cheltenham Festival, and the Masters.

The platform is led by founder Adam Shaw, and it positions player trust and regulatory integrity as core operating principles, including adherence to a voluntary code of good practice in the emerging prize draw sector, according to Open Banking Expo.

Key Features of the Partnership

At the center of the deal is Yaspa’s Open Banking-based payments and identity stack. Yaspa’s Intelligent Payments combines instant bank transfers with real-time account authentication and is “augmented with artificial intelligence,” according to Open Banking Expo.

Open Banking Expo also described the approach as using Open Banking infrastructure to pair instant bank transfers with real-time account authentication, so deposits can be processed in seconds while verification runs in the background. The stated goal is to let operators verify player identity and process deposits in seconds, without “administrative friction,” card fees, or drop-off associated with legacy payment gateways.

James Neville, Yaspa’s chief executive, framed the integration as a way to deliver instant transactions while maintaining strong verification “behind the scenes,” according to Open Banking Expo.

“By integrating our Open Banking and Intelligent Payments solutions, The Big Leagues can provide their growing community with effortless, instant transactions while ensuring the highest levels of verification and trust behind the scenes.”
—James Neville, CEO of Yaspa, quoted by Open Banking Expo

Fast and Secure Pay by Bank Transactions

The Big Leagues is using Yaspa to deliver Pay by Bank deposits and withdrawals—account-to-account transfers routed via Open Banking rails—according to Open Banking Expo. Yaspa positions this as a faster, more direct alternative to card-based flows, with the added benefit of avoiding card fees and reducing the friction that can cause users to abandon a transaction, Open Banking Expo reported.

Adam Shaw, founder of The Big Leagues, said the intent is to remove “the usual friction” from the payments journey and give players confidence through “instant, secure Open Banking transactions,” according to Open Banking Expo.

Automated Player Verification

Alongside payments, the integration includes automated player verification, according to Open Banking Expo. Yaspa says its approach uses real-time account authentication—enabled by Open Banking infrastructure—and is augmented with AI, Open Banking Expo reported. In practice, the promise is that identity checks can happen quickly during onboarding, reducing manual steps for both the operator and the player.

For a prize draw and prediction platform trying to scale, this pairing—instant transfers plus automated verification—targets two common failure points: slow deposits and cumbersome onboarding. The Big Leagues explicitly links the approach to “transparency and player security,” according to Open Banking Expo.

Yaspa’s Awards and Recognition in 2026

Yaspa has positioned itself as a multi-award-winning fintech focused on payment and identity solutions for regulated operators, including gambling, according to Open Banking Expo. IT Brief UK reported that Yaspa was founded in 2017 by a former Worldpay CTO. In 2026, the company was named Best Payment Solution Provider at the European iGaming Awards and Payment Solution of the Year at the SBC Awards, Open Banking Expo reported.

In June 2026, Yaspa also won two EGR B2B Awards: AI Solutions Provider and Safer Gambling Supplier, according to Open Banking Expo. Separately, CB Insights included Yaspa in its Top 100 Fintechs list, which the firm describes as a global ranking highlighting companies shaping the future of financial services, according to Open Banking Expo.

Taken together, the awards underscore how Yaspa is being evaluated: not only on payment performance, but also on AI-enabled capabilities and safer-gambling alignment—areas that matter when payments, identity, and player protection intersect.

Impact on Player Trust and Regulatory Integrity

Both companies are explicitly selling trust as much as speed. Open Banking Expo reported that the partnership is designed to give sports fans an “instant, frictionless payment experience” built on “high standards of transparency and player security.” The Big Leagues, for its part, says it is setting a high bar in the sports prize draw sector and views Yaspa as the technology partner to help deliver that, according to Open Banking Expo.

“Trust, speed, and simplicity are paramount to us and our players.”
—Adam Shaw, founder of The Big Leagues, quoted by Open Banking Expo

From an integrity standpoint, the combination of real-time account authentication and automated verification is meant to reduce the gaps that can appear when payments and identity are handled in separate steps. Open Banking Expo also reported Yaspa’s claim that Open Banking-based flows can reduce the “administrative friction” associated with legacy gateways—an operational issue that can become a compliance issue if checks are delayed or inconsistently applied.

The Big Leagues’ emphasis on governance and adherence to a voluntary code of good practice is part of the same message: that the prize draw sector can grow without sacrificing player protection, according to Open Banking Expo.

Yaspa’s Recent Investment and Growth

The partnership arrives during what Yaspa describes as a sustained growth period. Yaspa closed a USD $12 million investment round led by Discerning Capital in 2025, according to Open Banking Expo. The company has also expanded its footprint with a new Atlanta office in the US and a tech hub in Leeds, UK, which opened in August 2025, Open Banking Expo reported.

Those moves matter for customers evaluating operational resilience: payments and identity vendors are long-term infrastructure choices, and geographic expansion can signal hiring capacity, support coverage, and product development momentum. Yaspa’s strategy, as reflected in the Big Leagues integration, is to bundle payments and verification into a single experience that reduces drop-off while strengthening controls, according to Open Banking Expo.

The Future of Payments in Sports Engagement

Transforming User Experience with Open Banking

The Big Leagues is betting that sports fans will respond to a payments experience that feels immediate and straightforward: instant deposits and withdrawals, paired with verification that happens in the background, according to Open Banking Expo. For platforms built around prediction games and prize draws, that “time to play” moment is critical—any delay can become abandonment.

Open Banking-based Pay by Bank is also being positioned as a way to move beyond card-centric journeys, with Yaspa highlighting reduced friction and the removal of card fees as part of the value proposition, according to Open Banking Expo.

Setting New Standards in Compliance and Security

The partnership’s broader implication is the normalization of “payments plus identity” as a single product expectation in sports-adjacent gaming. Yaspa’s model—instant bank transfers combined with real-time account authentication and AI augmentation—aims to make verification and transaction integrity inseparable, according to Open Banking Expo.

For The Big Leagues, the message is that a prize draw platform can be built with governance and player protection as differentiators, not afterthoughts, including adherence to a voluntary code of good practice, Open Banking Expo reported. If that approach proves durable, it could raise baseline expectations for how sports engagement platforms handle onboarding, payments, and trust.

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