Veriff and Easygo/Stake: Delivering a high-confidence and friction-free way to onboard online players
Verifying customer age and residency – at speed and scale – can be a major challenge for online gaming companies. Veriff’s partnership with Easygo and Stake, however, shows it is possible to expedite checks without impacting customer experience.
Chris Hooper
About Easygo
Easygo is a global software development startup which focuses on disruptive technology within the online gaming sector. The company is renowned for the cutting-edge design of its casino games, crypto platforms, and sportsbooks – all built on Easygo’s “provably fair” algorithms. The founders of Easygo are the brains behind Stake.us and Stake.com, the world’s biggest online cryptocurrency casino.
The company’s stated aim is to bring simplicity and convenience to the gaming industry by developing casino games and sportsbook products for clients worldwide. By powering the biggest Bitcoin gambling games on the internet, it has created a niche that is enjoyed by millions of customers every year. Partnered with the Crypto Gambling Foundation, Easygo says it strives for fairness, honesty, and respect.
What business problems did Veriff solve for Easygo?
Prior to Easygo’s partnership with Veriff, its subsidiary Stake.us carried out manual in-house KYC screening. This process involved an ID verification team, based in Serbia, looking at thousands of individual customer documents and using a point-by-point checklist to determine if they were compliant.
Needless to say, this analogue approach was incredibly labor intensive, costly and caused a huge bottleneck in the customer-onboarding process. Thousands of customers had to routinely wait a week or longer before their ID was verified and they could meaningfully participate on Stake.us.
Fraudsters were also bombarding the website with fake ID documents, slowing down Stake.us’ entire verification system and seriously impacting the customer experience of bone fide customers.
“Veriff is so much faster than our manual in-house solution. It would be embarrassing to share how much faster it is!”
Easygo had previously worked with third parties in an attempt to develop an automated verification system, but it was unable to process the wide range of identity documents issued at US state level.
Dan Richardson, Chief Product Officer at Easy.go, explained: “We had a backlog of hundreds of thousands of identity documents that were awaiting verification. Some customers were waiting weeks. Since then, with Veriff’s help, we’ve been able to deal with that backlog. Veriff is so much faster than our manual in-house solution. It would be embarrassing to share how much faster it is!”
Identity verification was such a big issue for Easygo that, in order to maintain customer intent, it delayed the process, often allowing individuals to play for free until the organization could complete the protracted process.
"Veriff has a really clean customer interface, the prototype was really easy to use, and the system came to a decision really quickly. It was just a really great user experience, and that’s something that’s really important to us."
What made the difference to Easygo when choosing Veriff
Easygo turned to Veriff to accurately verify the customer age and address, to ensure their customers were legally old enough to gamble online and were resident in those US states where the company could legally operate and achieve regulatory compliance.
Veriff’s platform provided the automated, near-real-time solution Easygo was looking for. It asks customers to take a quick selfie as well as a photo of their government-issued ID using their smartphone or tablet. An AI algorithm checks the selfie for liveness and realness in real time by comparing it to live video taken from the customer’s device with their express permission.
The selfie is then compared to photographs from the customer’s government-issued identity documents, which are also automatically checked and authenticated using AI.
“Veriff integration was simple and stress-free. It didn’t take much time at all. In fact, it was one of the easiest workstreams on the whole website.”
The solution not only validates US state identity documents. It can also validate more than 11,000 government-issued documents worldwide, covering nearly every jurisdiction on the planet.
Veriff was also able to identify bad actors who were attempting to create multiple fake Stake.us user accounts in order to fraudulently benefit from promotions, such as opportunities to bet for free.
If Veriff’s platform is unable to verify customer ID, it automatically escalates the case to its extensive in-house fraud investigation team, based in Tallin, Estonia and Barcelona, Spain.
The Easygo team say they were particularly impressed with Veriff’s clean customer interface, the solution’s ease of use and the speed of decision making. Systems integration was also found to be swift and problem free.
“Veriff has a really clean customer interface, the prototype was really easy to use, and the system came to a decision really quickly,” Richardson said. “It was just a really great user experience, and that’s something that’s really important to us. Veriff’s integration was simple and stress-free. It didn’t take much time at all. In fact, it was one of the easiest workstreams on the whole website.”
What was the immediate impact of implementing Veriff?
Veriff was able to clear Stake.us’ ID verification backlog immediately and provide near-real-time validation from that point forward.
Authentic customers were also able to fully participate much earlier, while fraudsters and other bad actors were immediately identified and removed from the verification pipeline.
The speed and accuracy of Veriff’s platform meant that the Easygo team no longer needed to devote precious time and resources to the verification process. Instead, they could focus on other key goals such as improving customer experience and site profitability.
About Veriff
Veriff is the preferred identity verification partner for the world’s biggest and best digital companies, including pioneers in fintech, crypto, gaming, and the mobility sectors. We provide advanced technology, deep insights, and expertise from our foundation in digital-first Estonia and honed in leading the digital identity revolution. The partner of choice for businesses who need to rapidly and effortlessly verify online users from anywhere in the world, Veriff delivers the widest possible identity document coverage.
By supporting government-issued IDs from more than 230 issuing countries and territories and with our intelligent decision engine which analyzes thousands of technological and behavioral variables Veriff enables trust from the first hello. With more than 550 people from 60 different nationalities and offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Spain, and Estonia, we are dedicated to helping businesses and individuals build a safer and more secure online world.
