Payment providers combat online gaming industry age problems

Payment providers combat online gaming industry age problems

DataCash, the UK’s leading payment services provider has signed an agreement with BT that could help detect underage gambling on the internet, potential fraudulent activities, and also prepare for new money laundering and gambling legislation by means of identity verification service, URU(Trade Mark), also known as URUTM.

The URUTM service works by asking a series of questions and checking the individual’s answers against national reference databases such as mortality, electricity, telephone and financial industry records, passport and driving license details. The reference databases do not disclose personal data but instead rank each answer as "match" or "no match". An independent audit trail is also created to show that checks have been made.

Eventually, DataCash will be able to provide age, identity and fraud screening of credit and debit cards in a single check. The company is hoping that the service will be of particular interest to online gambling operators, who have been looking for a fail-safe system to verify their users are of legal age to gamble. Gaming organizations will no longer rely solely on a customer’s debit or Solo card – some of which can be issued to children as young as 11 – as a means of proving identity and setting up an account. Because the URUTM service carries out these checks in real-time, legitimate customers will still be able to get online quickly.

Gavin Breeze, Business Development Director, DataCash, said: “Identity fraud related crimes constitute the UK’s fastest growing criminal activity and look set to cost the country a staggering £1.3 billion per annum. Because of the comprehensive online checks carried out via URUTM, this agreement will help to overcome the numerous loopholes found in current processes, which mainly rely on paper-based checks that can easily be forged.”