Michael Goonan, Senior Account Executive at Socure, spoke with SBC Americas to discuss their recent agreement with DraftKings, touching upon ways in which Socure will help streamline the operator’s onboarding processes. 

He explained how DraftKings will benefit from access to Socure’s Intelligent KYC (Know Your Customer) and Global Watchlist with Monitoring products to assist in identity verification for new customers across its Daily Fantasy Sports, Sportsbook, and iGaming products.

SBC: Firstly, can you tell our readers a little bit about Socure? 

Socure provides the most accurate online assessment of a player’s identity, allowing gaming operators to maximize KYC auto-approvals while minimizing compliance and fraud risk. As a leader in identity verification, we help answer the questions, “are you a real person?” and “are you who you say you are?” for online gaming operators at account opening and beyond. 

Our Intelligent KYC has proven to help our online gaming customers, such as DraftKings, achieve auto-acceptance rates of up to 90%, while reducing manual reviews by 14%. 

Socure is approved to provide online identity verification services to online gaming operators in Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Tennessee, and West Virginia. We have also filed for vendor status in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

We have more than 400 customers across the financial services, gaming, teleco, and ecommerce industries and recently reached unicorn status, having raised just under $200 million in venture capital from leading investors including Accel, Citi Ventures, and Wells Fargo

SBC: What would you say is unique to Socure’s services?

Our powerful platform enables online gaming operators to seamlessly verify the identities of new players at account opening quickly and with unmatched accuracy—without introducing friction. This results in high conversions to support responsible growth while reducing the need for manual reviews. During the DraftKings proof-of-concept, our Intelligent KYC achieved a frictionless auto-approval rate increase of 4.5% for new players.

In addition to streamlining onboarding of new customers, we can also help to reduce chargebacks, safely increase player limits, and extend player lifetime value. 

Our unique methodology includes using diverse data sources, advanced clustering, and intelligent-rank decision outputs, all with simple, actionable reason codes. This methodology allows online gaming operators to increase auto-enrollment rates, reduce manual reviews, and maintain compliance, particularly around age verification.

SBC: Can you talk us through the evaluation process that led to this partnership with DraftKings?

DraftKings selected Socure after a lengthy evaluation process that included a robust proof-of-concept test. We were able to demonstrate the ability to significantly increase auto-acceptance rates for new players, while reducing operational costs, and minimizing regulatory risk.

SBC: How will Socure’s technology help streamline DraftKings’ onboarding processes, as well as meet its KYC and compliance requirements?

The Socure ID+ platform streamlines online identity verification to minimize friction and drop off rates, and maximize new player conversions through its Intelligent KYC and Global Watchlist offerings. The platform uses numerous data sources, including proprietary data with more than 290 million good identities, as well as over 7 billion records from credit, utility, telecom, and other authoritative sources to deliver market-leading matching accuracy.

SBC: As more and more US states begin to open their doors to a legalized betting framework, how important is it that compliance is at the forefront of every company’s operational strategy? 

In this heavily regulated environment, compliance is an integral part of every aspect of the player lifecycle. A key driver of success for the overall market is for gaming operators to consistently demonstrate to regulators that they are conducting business responsibly and in a compliant manner. Socure enables operators to instill that confidence while maximizing their growth opportunity.