A study by Ravelin, a fraud detection and payment acceptance specialist, concludes that 71% of online gambling merchants have reported an increase in promotion abuse over the past year.
After surveying 1,700 fraud and payment professionals based at online gambling platforms, the study found that 62% of all types of online merchants had suffered an increase in fraud over the past 12 months. These operators detailed significant impacts on revenue as a result of online fraud.
Promotional offers are a common tactic employed by online gambling platforms to attract customers; such offers include loyalty rewards, sign-up bonuses and free bets.
Savvy players make use of multiple accounts and different IP addresses to exploit these promotions, finding loopholes that result in heavy financial losses for the companies targeted.
How does gambling bonus abuse look like from a fraudster’s perspective?
We had the opportunity to chat with two former bonus abusers, Ozric Vondervelden and Ed Dickerson about their world.#SEON #FraudFighters #Fraud #Podcast #BonusAbuse #OnlineGambling pic.twitter.com/ry7AD4viGb— SEON. Fraud Fighters (@seon_tech) September 24, 2020
Another form of fraud that has seen an increase is online payment fraud, with 67% of merchants reporting a rise in payment details being taken from customer accounts. The high traffic of the websites involved can make it difficult for companies to clamp down on fraudulent activity.
Martin Sweeney, CEO at Ravelin, said: “Gambling websites often have high transaction volume, with players making a lot of payments regularly which can make it difficult to detect fraudsters card testing or even catch individual fraudulent purchases. Bolstering your fraud detection with an external machine learning platform is crucial to meet the growing complexity and variety of tactics used by fraudsters.”
The Ravelin study went on to detail the steps being taken by these merchants to tackle the issue, with 90% predicting an increase in budget and 85% employing more fraud prevention team members.
