TOPsport is the first and largest leading iGaming, gambling, and betting company in Lithuania. Starting as a traditional walk-in betting shop, it has grown into a unique gaming hub, offering a wide variety of both standard gambling and online betting, with a selection of compliant, ethical, and secure gaming experiences in sports betting, live casinos, and other bet games. With over 20 years in the market, TOPsport continues to scale its operations while delivering an engaging experience for its players.
However, with this sort of volume of players accessing different casino-style and sports betting options online every day, TOPsport needed a reliable Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) solutions provider to ensure that all players are verified as quickly as possible, ensuring they a) don’t provide fake or altered IDs, and b) are of age and can access the age-restricted platform’s games legally. On top of that, to maintain a responsible iGaming environment, TOPsport needed a reliable AI-powered solution for AML screening and monitoring.
The Challenges
Since this is a heavily regulated sector handling large transactions, TOPsport aimed to increase security, safeguarding the player journey from start to finish, including the account creation process and what happens after the onboarding. For example, this included monitoring suspicious behavior and ensuring secure transactions when players redeemed their winnings. Tasks like manually reviewing multiple sanctions lists were no longer a sustainable option for its large customer base since they created a backlog for the in-house compliance specialists and increased the risk of missing critical AML red flags.
Additionally, operating in iGaming, which is a highly competitive market, TOPsport wanted to use automation not only for AML screening but also in its KYC program as a way to improve the initial player account creation process. On paper, this seemed like a complex, multi-step process, especially if done manually. That’s why the gaming company looked for RegTech software that could automatically extract personal information from a client’s ID, including their date of birth (DOB), to verify the user’s whole identity, which meant ensuring the player is over 18.
“The new system needed to confirm that the person submitting the document was the actual account holder through liveness checks during the biometric verification stage of KYC. That’s because spoofing was an issue and overall we wanted more accurate fraud detection,” said Dainius Gulbinas, the CEO of TOPsport.
➡️ Challenges in KYC Verification
Customers had to upload documents multiple times, which delayed onboarding and causing frustration, which potentially meant lost conversions and new users going to another iGaming provider. This proved the importance of enhancing different aspects of the identity verification process including efficiency, clear user guidelines, a streamlined flow, and minimal friction.
That’s why the new automated identity verification solution:
- Needed to be efficient and align with its risk management framework, which included both AML checks and standard ID document checks coupled with biometric verification.
- Had to meet the industry’s age restrictions and jurisdictional requirements, as the platform offers various casino-style games tailored for an international audience.
“We started noticing more sophisticated attempts to bypass verification; therefore, standard document checks weren’t enough to ensure security and integrity of our platform,” explained Dainius Gulbinas.
➡️ Challenges in AML Screening
Players who were underage attempted to forge documents to access the platform or used their relatives’ ID documents, among other fraudulent tactics, such as the use of bots or multi-accounting used for bonus abuse. Along with these challenges, AML laws for gaming and betting were tightened, especially due to the rising number of these sorts of scams globally and the industry’s vulnerability to financial crime.
To stay compliant while preventing fraud effectively, TOPsport’s AML program needed to focus on:
- Performing AML screening during onboarding along with KYC checks.
- Conducting ongoing monitoring afterwards across multiple databases and global watchlists.
Spotting all risk signals and suspicious data points and running AML screening in the background became time-consuming and required significant internal sources, especially when reviewing edge or high-risk cases that required extra due diligence. As a result, TOPsport’s team aimed to reduce compliance management costs and save time.
The Solution
As a solution to keep the platform safe and compliant, as well as keep up with the fastly growing user volumes, TOPsport integrated iDenfy’s AI-powered identity verification and AML screening and monitoring solutions to:
- Streamline the onboarding process, including age verification.
- Improve KYC conversion rates, reducing attempts to pass KYC unsuccessfully.
- Spot fraudsters and issues like fake IDs or masks in real-time.
- Improve the overall experience for genuine players.
- Streamline PEPs and sanctions checks, as well as adverse media screening, since the platform’s average volume for AML monitoring is +5000 users daily.
“Suboptimal user experience was never the option, not even during user volume hikes. We couldn’t afford to have a backlog, so we integrated iDenfy to create a KYC process that allows users to access their favorite games as quickly and smoothly as possible,” commented Dainius Gulbinas, the CEO of TOPsport.
Since partnering with iDenfy in 2017, TOPsport now uses the following solutions:
✔️ ID document verification with Auto-Capture and AI data extraction
✔️ Selfie verification with Liveness and Face-Matching
✔️ Glare and blur detection
✔️ Age verification
✔️ Adverse media screening
✔️ AML screening (PEPs & sanctions lists)
✔️ Ongoing AML monitoring
iDenfy’s support team helped integrate the KYC and AML solutions smoothly, providing assistance throughout the process, including planning and deployment. Initially, the onboarded users weren’t subjected to AML screening, but after regulatory changes, they had to be included in ongoing AML screening by a specific date. TOPsport was able to white-label the identity verification journey to match its brand and implement its chosen built-in features using the SDK method.
➡️ Why iDenfy?
iDenfy demonstrated a strong industry reputation and expertise in TOPsport’s local and global operating markets, which was an important aspect when choosing a reliable RegTech provider since they needed to cover various risk management areas and be able to help deal with geographical and industry specifics.
TOPsport integrated iDenfy’s KYC and AML software due to the following factors:
- Accurate and real-time risk management capabilities
- An intuitive dashboard for managing both KYC/AML data with built-in audit logs
- Feature-rich software for complete compliance, tailored for the iGaming industry
On top of that, iDenfy provided multiple features to customize KYC verification flow for different use cases, such as triggering ID verification before high-risk transactions exceeding a set AML threshold. iDenfy also offers an extensive ID document database and a broad range of AML databases within a single dashboard. This helped automate compliance tasks, including processes like logging player data for audits, and simplified manual reviews when enhanced due diligence was needed.
“There were mandatory compliance tasks that were conducted manually, taking too much time away from our other business initiatives that contributed to revenue growth. As we scaled, we knew we needed to switch to automation to improve this aspect as well,” commented Dainius Gulbinas.
The Results
Since using iDenfy, TOPsport has reduced verification time significantly, fully automating the player account creation process and increasing its pass rate to over 89%. This helped the iGaming and betting platform verify users and prevent fraud efficiently while minimizing unwanted drop-offs and boosting conversions.
By combining document verification with biometric checks, TOPsport ensures a secure and responsible gaming environment. This approach guarantees that age-restricted games are accessed only by legitimate, of-age users worldwide, without adding unnecessary burdens.
The same goes for TOPsport’s in-house compliance team, which can now easily manage high volumes of AML databases, including automated daily monitoring of 5000+ customers on its platform for PEPs, sanctions, and adverse media. This switch to a fully automated AML framework helped strengthen TOPsport’s compliance program and, more importantly, save at least 30% on AML/KYC process management costs.
The company also improved its transparency by using iDenfy’s user-friendly dashboard, which provides real-time insights into AML screening and monitoring, along with other details, such as accurate KYC denial reasons and pass rates. This allows TOPsport to onboard legitimate players while efficiently and accurately blocking fraudulent users and underage gamers.
About TOPsport
- TOPsport is the leading iGaming and betting platform in Lithuania, offering both traditional gambling and online betting experiences, such as casino games and sports betting, for its large customer base
- With over 20 years in the industry, the company has created a secure and responsible gaming environment online and established a large selection of traditional walk-in betting points and casinos all over the country.
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