GTECH Holdings Corp. recently wrapped up a series of projects to convert lottery customers in Europe to the new euro currency in advance of the Jan. 1 changeover.
Next month, the European Commission will require each of the 12 participating countries’ lottery systems to report in both euros as well as local currencies. The West Greenwich-based company – which derives about 50 percent of its roughly $1 billion in annual revenues from foreign markets – has lottery customers in nine of those countries.
”Essentially, what we’ve been doing is taking the software and the reporting systems for lottery tickets and converting them so they can be reported in the euro currency,” said Jaymin P. Patel, GTECH’s chief financial officer. The company has been working on the currency conversions for about two years.
The process for each lottery customer was twofold: GTECH had to mesh the business objectives of each lottery system with the EC’s new euro-conversion standards, Patel said.
It has been an involved and complex process, because many of the jurisdictions within Europe have several different lottery games, each requiring rewritten software codes for conversion to the euro currency. And some of GTECH’s European customers have cross-border lotteries, adding another layer of complexity, Patel said.
In recognition of the company’s expertise in euro conversion, GTECH was selected as an official “euro partner” for a euro-conversion publicity campaign launched in September by the European Commission and European Central Bank. The list of partners includes dozens of international companies recognized as having expertise in euro conversion, including Citigroup, American Express and Marriott Hotels.
