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The sports industry is embracing digitization, which comes with greater challenges and online gaming platforms require age verification solutions to counter them.
The online gaming industry has continued to thrive since the pandemic. Today, it is a recreational activity in the majority of regions and players from different countries compete through digital platforms. Despite the rapidly changing landscape, e-gaming is facing numerous challenges. Under-aged gambling, identity theft, account takeover, and young player onboarding of children are some of the most threatening risks.
Every year with increasing digitization, online gaming platforms strive to lessen their risk of fraud prevention failure. While e-sports continue to grow at a compound rate of 10% per annum, its market worth is expected to cross €29.3 billion by the end of 2022. Considering this tremendous development, online gaming platforms need to enhance their age verification mechanisms.
Online Gaming Industry – Challenges Associated with Player Onboarding
The modes of gaming have evolved over the decades from playground matches to online sports. As a result, the latter is becoming a new normal while land-based gambling seems to fade. Online gaming is more convenient and players from around the globe can compete without having to leave their comfort zones. However, despite all these advancements, e-sports platforms encounter several obstacles, such as children onboarding.
Under-aged players are unaware of who they might interact with after creating a counterfeit profile by using their elders’ details. On the other side, criminals eagerly wait for young participants to exploit them for confidential information. Later, they use the payment as well as account details to perform illicit activities. Therefore, existing online age verifiers are not enough to place restrictions on minors.
Checkboxes, puzzles, date of birth validation, and document authentication are easier to pass through. By using their parents’ ID cards, passports, driver’s licenses, and other proofs, children easily bypass age checks.
Payment Fraud
The revenue generated by mobile games is expected to reach $103.5 billion by the end of 2022. However, this growth is attracting the attention of money launderers. They target minors by disguising their identities as website owners, retailers, and other such personnel. As a result, children make payments by using their parents’ credit/debit cards.
Fraudsters steal confidential payment information and later use the accounts to move their illicit funds. In this regard, integrating age identification solutions has become a must-have for online gaming platforms.
For Detailed Age Verification Demo
Identity Theft
Children conceal their identities to register as legitimate players by using their parents’ information. Clearly, this also helps them escape online age verification as they are using the details of an elder. After onboarding, fraudsters exploit young players to hack their accounts which they later use either for participating in unethical gambling or performing other illegal activities. Therefore, online gaming platforms need to critically verify customer age before granting them access to virtual competitions.
Increasing Protection for Minors with Online Age Verification Solutions
Advanced identity fraud techniques require robust online age verification systems. While children conceal their identities behind their parents, online gaming platforms need to enhance their digital onboarding mechanisms. With AI-powered IDV services in place, e-sports sites can critically identify players. By deploying selfie-based identification and liveness detection, online gaming platforms can ensure the presence of users at the time of registration. Furthermore, biometric analysis helps analyze facial features to further ensure minors are not requesting access.
To put it in a simple way, AI-powered age verification deploys advanced mathematical algorithms that are hard to breach by children. Moreover, they counter account takeover fraud which ultimately leads to preventing other criminal activities. Read on to learn more about the benefits that digital age checks bring for online gaming platforms:
Maintains Reputation
Customers look forward to online gaming platforms that retain a secure worth in the marketplace and involve fewer fraud risks. They want their personal and children’s information to be safe from data breaches. In case e-sport sites fail to protect minors from criminal exploitation, they will face numerous consequences from hefty non-compliance fines to legal proceedings. Therefore, using online age verifiers to run critical player identification can uphold the integrity of e-gaming platforms.
Enhance Customer Experience
Retaining a positive customer experience is a topmost priority for online gaming platforms. E-sports sites organize virtual tournaments to provide global players with a place where they can compete with diverse participants. In this process, restricting minors’ access equally matters. Therefore, online gaming platforms should employ AI-powered age verification checks to stay one step ahead of children’s sophisticated attempts.
Summarizing the Facts
Adhering with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) are the e-gaming platforms pass to operate in the digital sphere securely. Similarly, integrating AI-powered IDV solutions to identify age online plays a significant role in enhancing fraud prevention. This way, online gaming platforms can ensure they are assisting children and in return, fulfill their corporate responsibility. Hence, age identification solutions make it easier for e-sports sites to connect global players in a risk-free environment.