GGRAsia – Payment behaviour may help spot at-risk gamblers: study

Payment behaviour may help spot at-risk gamblers: study

Mar 30, 2023 Newsdesk Industry Talk, Latest News

New research by the University of Nevada, Las Vegas International Gaming Institute (IGI) suggests that identifying patterns of behaviour when people pay for gaming services can eventually support responsible gambling efforts, as it might help detect at-risk players. The study was conducted based on data provided by various payment technology and software providers.

In a Wednesday press release, Sightline Payments LLC, a financial technology (fintech) firm specialising in payments for the regulated gaming industry, stated it contributed data to IGI from nearly 100 million transactions across the full spectrum of gaming operators: online casino, mobile sports betting, pari-mutuel, lottery, and cashless gaming at casinos.

The study found that more than 88 percent of customers exhibited patterns of activity “that were not suggestive of any unsustainable or harmful behaviour”.

Within the remaining 12 percent, researchers found “three clusters of behaviour” payments-wise “that may represent customers who are at potential risk of experiencing harm,” said the release.

Each customer’s behaviour when transacting payment was described according to the frequency, amount, intensity, and variability of their deposits and withdrawals, as well as the time of day they made deposits and how often deposits were declined. The researchers then used a machine-learning algorithm to cluster similar customers together based on these payment-behaviour indicators.

The smallest cluster of customers, comprising 1.2 percent of the sample, exhibited a high volume of deposits and withdrawals, as well as high variability in their deposited amounts, according to the assessment of the researchers.

“Given the high variability in the amount deposited and overall high net spend, it is possible that these customers engage in unsustainable gambling behaviours,” noted the release

Kasra Ghaharian, senior research fellow at IGI, was quoted in the release as saying: “As digital payments have helped fuel the immense growth of online sports betting and online casino, understanding how digital transaction data can identify potentially harmful behaviours is critical for helping people wager responsibly.”

Omer Sattar, co-chief executive and co-founder at Sightline, stated that the research would “serve as a foundation to build next-generation solutions that help identify customers who might have issues with their gambling behaviour.”