10 out of 10: Head of Antifraud speaks up about iGaming industry
High-risk industries, such as online casinos, get their name because they come with increased risks for all participants, mainly financial. Thousands of people use online casinos for gaming entertainment every day, but unfortunately, not all visitors play fair. As a result, operators risk finding themselves in an unfavorable position, losing their reputation, funds, and even the ability to continue doing business. So, how can you protect yourself from fraud, preserve your project's profitability, and provide a safe platform for all users? Let's discuss this topic in more detail with our invited expert.
Monoup launches a new thread in our blog for iGaming and game brands where we will offer insides and secrets for successful projects from industry professionals. We will talk about optimizing processes and minimizing costs for operators by implementing a really working approach in practice. The series of interviews will cover different parts of product operation and every professional will answer 10 questions to help make your product “10 out of 10” level.
Today invitee is Head of Antifraud, let’s move on:
Q: Please tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you are responsible for within your work scope.
A: My name is Alexander. I am the Head of Antifraud in an iGaming company. I have been dealing with risk management and fraud for over 5 years. My work experience in gambling counts almost seven years; I started with customer support team and then transitioned to antifraud. My current responsibilities include leading the security department.
Q: Do you gamble yourself? How did you come to the industry?
A: I think that 90% of people start working in high-risk accidentally, and I am no exception. My career started in the support department, but I was always interested in risk management, despite having no experience in that field. As I see it, support is a breeding ground for other positions because support team has the deepest knowledge of the product. Basically, if you have worked in support department for more than a year, then nothing will ever scare you. So, that's how I gradually reached my current position.
Speaking of games, I am not a gambling person, and moreover, the risk department's responsibilities include checking slots for potential abuse, so I get enough of that at work. And if I play during my free time would be like the situation in the famous meme, you know. When the courier who works in delivery service, comes home after work and starts playing Death Stranding.
Q: What is the role of the anti-fraud department in the current iGaming product? Do you think manual labor is still required or automated systems can fully replace it?
A: There is always a lot of payment and gaming fraud in casinos, so I think that anti-fraud department plays a very important role in any project — this department literally saves money. Moreover, without this department, you wouldn’t be able to comply with AML and Responsible Gaming procedures, which are required for most licenses and compliance checks.
Recently, automated systems have made significant progress, including the active implementation of artificial intelligence, which really makes our life much easier. Some tasks can be completely transferred to these tools, but it will not be possible to completely abandon human involvement in the near future. Someone needs to configure AI and monitor the software — how it works. Software, in fact, is only an assistant, and decisions should be made by a human. For example, in the fight against fraud in sports betting, I cannot imagine how a human can be replaced with software at the moment.
Q: Please outline the fraud threats that most startups miss out and why they shouldn’t be doing that.
A: There is a very common view, especially among startups, that firstly you need to generate traffic, make a profit, and even reach profitability, and then you can hire anti-fraud and other departments that do not generate real money. Some of them even manage to work in this way until one of their VIP players requests chargebacks on the amounts of all their deposits, which turns out to be almost half of the project's income. After which you can close the project : )
Of course, I am exaggerating a bit here, but many CEOs have a totally wrong opinion of the anti-fraud department. They think it is only user verification and a couple of payouts that are made manually. In reality, it is a serious analytical work with both new and old players (no one can be sure that their VIP player with millions in turnover will not suddenly start opposing in roulette tomorrow). Also, we have to remember that any project cannot exist without various bonuses, which are main target for bonus hunters. I can talk a lot actually about what an anti-fraud department is, but it is important to understand one simple thing here — putting on hold development of this department can result in substantial losses.
Q: How would you evaluate current fraud risk by countries? Which country/-es from your experience is the most vulnerable?
A: If we talk about today's popular jurisdictions, then traditionally the first place goes to India, this country is always associated with a huge amount of fraud, both gaming and payment. Latin America, in particular Brazil, is also not really behind in this race. And Southeast Asia should also be considered a region with a high level of risk. First of all, this is payment fraud, followed by gaming fraud and bonus hunters.
Q: Which fraud prevention instruments would you recommend to every iGaming brand? Any market known software or do you think in-house development works better?
A: It’s quite difficult to recommend a specific product here because every brand has different needs and starting points. Crypto projects are one thing, projects with card acquiring are completely another. What I can definitely recommend, especially to young projects, is not to engage in the development of your own anti-fraud software. You can effectively use a ready-made solution that will meet your requirements and not waste time for developments. Currently, SumSub, Seon, and Trackier are among the market leaders, but there are also many other solutions that can almost fully meet any needs.
In my experience, I saw quite large projects that reduced their staff by almost a half after starting to use third-party anti-fraud software. But there are also opposite examples when, after connecting automated solution, management realized the real scale of losses from fraud and, on the contrary, increased financing in this direction and the team.
Q: Which risks are imposed now in the era of p2p payments? How to make sure you control the situation?
A: Many still believe that P2P payments can rid the project of problems with chargebacks or other payment fraud, but this is far from the case. A dishonest or simply offended player can still go to the bank and request chargebacks. And some Indians will not miss their chance to try the luck and submit a self-edited payment receipt for 100,000 rupees, while making a minimum deposit.
There is no single recipe here for reducing risks to zero; each country is unique in this regard and has its own common issues. And that is why experienced human eyes are needed. We need someone who can properly configure every software and people around so payment team and the marketing department still talking to each other : )
Q: Do you work in the office or remotely? Do you think it is possible to operate a successful antifraud team fully remotely and is that safe for a brand?
A: This is a really interesting question. So, if we to ignore specific positions that have to be present in the office for compliance reasons and licensing, then it is quite possible to have a fully functioning anti-fraud department working remotely.
Personally, I work remotely, as my team does. Of course, we should take into account the nature of working with player’s personal information, to comply with GDPR, PCI DSS, and other regulations. If the department is set and procedures are clearly established, then the remote format does not affect productivity in any way.
Q: Can you remember for us the most interesting or just the case you remember with the player? That would be an intriguing piece.
A: Hah, okay let’s try. Those, who are familiar with gambling, know about the slot Divine Fortune. For everyone else, I'll shortly explain — this is a slot with network progressive jackpot that, as far as I remember, reached once $170,000. So of course, the higher jackpot amount, the more people try to win it. Jackpot hunters come to various casinos for that reason. Sometimes these are individuals with a huge pool of funds, very often these are team of people with a common budget who, using clickers, bots, and other methods, try to win this jackpot. On one of my previous projects, more than a dozen such accounts were banned per day, some with deposits of more than $5,000 per day.
So, what else. I am often asked how ethical it is to work in iGaming and how I feel about it, since casinos are often the cause of personal tragedies in people's lives. I am not involved in sales, so my I am clear, ha-ha (may call center employees and other marketers forgive me please), but I often remember one story.
When I just started to work with risk management, being on the front line in a project for the CIS market, I was engaged in the initial verification of players. Once on a night shift, a support agent approached me with a request to check a player out of turn. When I opened his profile, I saw that the person had won 9,000,000 RUB in the slot, with his deposits totaling only 15,000 RUB. The win was absolutely legitimate, but from the photos that the player sent, it was clear that the person was of a not that serious lifestyle. If you know what I mean. On this basis, I had a discussion with the support agent about whether this win could change the person's life for the better or money means nothing in this case.
And in the next six months, I periodically checked on this player, and unfortunately, I was right — he returned all 9,000,000 in deposits and another 2,000,000 RUB on top. And then I finally became convinced that the casino earns exclusively on human greed. I want to preempt the question about gambling addiction — any good casino takes responsible gaming very seriously and always blocks such players.
Q: Being at this point, which further steps in your career do you plan to take?
A: That’s a good question. At this stage, I have achieved a lot; I think. I have worked in both large stable projects and in startups, where I built the department from scratch. Now, I think it would be interesting to engage with some software developer to build the perfect product that would benefit many of iGaming brands.
In conclusion, we would like to outline that we agree with many of the theses highlighted in this interview. Indeed, the anti-fraud department is an important component of a successful iGaming and game product, and you should not leave it behind at the beginning of your business journey.
The smaller the turnover of the project, the faster you should start implementing anti-fraud solutions. Otherwise, the losses will be significantly greater on large volumes. The choice of the right approach, software, and protection methods is the responsibility of casino antifraud team and top management. Excelling in this would greatly help to grow a sustainable business model and profitable online product.
