The recent growth in the real money gaming sector in India — 152 million users, and 21% more time spent— is supported by investment in digital infrastructure, smartphone penetration and changing patterns of consumption. But the regulation on these games in India is still iffy, to say the least. The leading real money gaming businesses are resorting to technology to walk tightly on the regulation rope and secure the first mover’s advantage in this industry that is evolving at a head-spinning pace.
We list five technologies that are going to make all the difference in creating engaging, compliant and fraud-free player onboarding journeys in the present and the future.
Biometric Identification
Player identification is not only a mandatory compliance requirement to avoid money laundering and underage playing, but also necessary to ensure that only a desirable pool of players (with spending capacity) is accessing real money gaming platforms. Biometric identification helps real money gaming businesses match a player to their documents through image-based face match. Being adopted by leading fantasy sports players, the technology helps in validating that a player accessing the platform is same one who registered in the first place.
Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
Games with stakes naturally attract fraudsters who are lured by the promise of drawing from a big pool of money for a small investment. With a prolific use of image editing software, the first entry point for them on the platform is by submitting fake documents that go unflagged. OCR technology catches document forgery and tampering easily, sieving fake applications from the real ones. OCR also enables scalability and ease of onboarding with automated data capturing and organisation. This translates into a great player onboarding experience and lower account abandonment rates.
Digital Address Verification
As Indian states legislate independently on games with stakes, there is a lot of confusion around different state regulations around real money gaming. While some states, like Meghalaya, Nagaland, and Sikkim welcome these games, others like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh have banned games with stakes, which means that gaming companies must discourage players in the latter states from accessing their platform. Digital Address Verification is emerging as a great tool to enable this. By capturing location of a user through geo-coordinates, the solution can prevent location spoofing.
Database-Driven Document Verification
Underage playing — below 18 years— for stakes is illegal in all states. Moreover, as we discussed earlier, allowing players from restricted states on to the platform can get a business on the wrong side of the law. This necessitates that a thorough document verification is conducted for all players. This process, if manually done, can take up to days, leading to a poor player onboarding experience. NID verification against PAN or Aadhaar databases allows for a quick verification of documents, establishing the identity of a player in real time.
Bank Account Verification with Penny Drop Method
Since real money gaming involves actual stakes, it is a ripe platform for money laundering and financial crimes. It is crucial that a user bank account is verified before making any financial transaction. API-based penny drop method is a great way of ensuring the authenticity of an account. This is done by depositing a small amount — usually INR 1 in the Indian context — which returns the validated bank details along with the beneficiary’s name.
AuthBridge is an industry-leader in building end-to-end player onboarding journeys. Our technology stack for real money gaming platforms covers all that is needed to succeed and make an impact in the context of evolving Indian regulation, digital transformation, and a memorable player onboarding experience.
To understand more about any of the above solutions or to get these for your business, you can contact our solutions expert at sales@authbridge.com.
