With the increase in technological variations around the world, consumers are changing their interests at a rapid pace. A wide array of audiences are turning towards the e-gaming space where they can have a fun time interacting with other players, getting entertained, learning new things and even earning a good deal of money through streaming and other video content. These platforms often offer in-game purchases or a membership pass in the form of microtransactions that contribute a good deal of financial influx to the industry.
The fact that these companies or gaming studios gain a good profit from the services and products they offer makes them some sort of financial organization that deals with monetary exchanges one way or the other. But not being regulated by any central banking authority or government-led institute, the eSports industry is facing serious consequences in terms of data breaches and player identity theft.
To address these security-related concerns, identity verification in the online gaming industry has become increasingly important. This way, financial transactions can be carried out through a safe and secure channel while gaming businesses can prevent their customers from falling prey to identity theft instances.
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Current E-gaming Landscape
As discussed earlier, the eSports industry is a sweet spot for fraudsters to achieve their illicit motives. You might not be aware, but there are a huge number of online gaming platforms that are set up to conduct anti money laundering and other ill activities such as terrorism financing and trafficking. The increasing rate of digital fraud and financial crime in this sector is possible due to the in-game currencies that most players consume and spend. That currency is often the equivalent of real money and the player has to pay with their credit card to proceed with the transaction.
With people engaging towards these platforms, bad actors have also turned to this market to reap benefits by hijacking user identities. Apart from that, there are certain loopholes in gaming frameworks to verify the identity of online players that makes the problem more challenging. This gap is well perceived by identity thieves and exploited equally posing a big threat to the industry at scale. This calls for regulatory measures that need to take place while online account openings and when customers perform in-game payments through their payment cards.
AML gaming checks are necessary for any customers that pose a higher risk of financial crime to gaming corporations. This can significantly reduce the propagation of digital fraud through digital gaming platforms.
Identity Verification of Gamers
For any business offering its services in the e-gaming industry, it needs to make sure proper safety measures are in place to prevent fraud so that onboarding and existing players can enjoy a safe experience over their platform. Identity verification for online gaming platforms should be a priority for these service providers so that no cybercrime instance takes place. These AML/KYC checks during the checkout process, while player enrollment can build a greater level of trust between the customers and business.
Since identity verification checks are performed using automated solutions available in the market, they verify the gamer in real-time without them needing to come to the premises for the verification to take place. All the customer needs is to display their valid/official identity document in front of their smartphone camera, or from the webcam on their laptop/mac/notebook. The ID verification solution itself captures the photo and uses it to extract personally identifiable information of the end-user which is used to verify their legitimacy. Identity verification of online gamers also makes sure Know Your Customer (KYC) standards are properly followed.
What Future Does E-gaming Hold?
If adequate identity verification checks for online gaming are put in place, the industry is set to embrace a staggering increase in revenue as well as becoming a safer place for the global gaming population. A robust solution purpose-built for verifying gamer identity can allow eSports businesses to cut on AML non-compliance costs and prevent identity theft cases in the long run. This will allow the e-gaming industry to prosper fraud-free and with a lesser threat of stolen identities.