Who I am.
I'm Mark Darling, a UK-based product engineer. Before Handpay, I led mobile engineering at Gymshark, the UK fitness apparel company. Most of my career has been spent shipping consumer mobile products. Handpay is my independent project through MarkD Limited.
The app is a solo build. Not an agency project and not a venture round. I write the iOS code, design the product, write these pages, and sign off on every decision. If something on this site is wrong, that's on me, and I'd want to know. Email mark@handpayapp.com.
Why I built Handpay.
The short version: because there's no good slot logbook, and slot players are a large, underserved community of enthusiasts who deserve one.
I've visited Las Vegas and other slot markets for years as a player. Every trip ended the same way: a photo roll full of machines, a rough sense of how the trip went, but no real record to look back on. A year later, the detail was gone.
Slot players already have a rich community (YouTube channels with millions of views, podcasts, forums) but the tooling for tracking your own play is nowhere. Spreadsheets get abandoned. Photo rolls don't organise themselves. Casino loyalty programs give you points, not a log. Handpay is the app I wanted, built for everyone else who wanted the same thing.
See the home page for the product, or read what is a handpay for the concept the app is named after.
What I refuse to do.
Four decisions that aren't up for negotiation, now or later.
- No affiliate links to casinos or operators. None. Ever. The incentives don't work unless I stay independent.
- No selling user data. No adtech. No third-party tracking pixels. Your log belongs to you, not to advertisers.
- Responsible gambling is built into the code path, not added as a settings tab. Budget caps, cool-offs, and self-exclusion gate the start of every session.
- No live P&L, no fiction about what the machine is doing. Handpay records what you entered, and nothing else.
These are expanded on in the Thinking section of the home page and in the budget tool guide.
The company behind it.
Handpay is a product of MarkD Limited, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 16148311). MarkD Limited is my UK vehicle for independent product work, based in Birmingham.
Legal details for the site and the app are in the privacy policy and the terms of service.
Contact.
Direct email: mark@handpayapp.com.
Press: press@handpayapp.com.
Privacy and UK GDPR requests: privacy@handpayapp.com.