RISK IDENT secures Hamburg-based game developer WHOW Games against online fraud

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With 90 employees, WHOW Games is one of the top 20 German games developers. On the online game portals operated by WHOW Games, such as Jackpot.de, myjackpot.com or MaryVegas.com, millions of users from all over the world enjoy the rich and free range of classic casino games, which offer an entertaining collaborative gaming experience through the addition of social game mechanics. Players generally receive the virtual chips used on the portals for the individual casino games free of charge. However, in order to expand their own gaming experience somewhat, portal customers also have the option of purchasing additional chips and further gaming functions by paying real money. It is not possible to exchange virtual chips for real money.

To ensure that the payment processing of its customers is protected against fraud attempts, WHOW Games has enlisted the expertise of RISK IDENT in the area of fraud prevention.

Also based in Hamburg, RISK IDENT secures an important part of its customers’ online sales against fraud attempts. Its services range from device fingerprinting to state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms that establish links between transaction data and identify patterns of online fraudsters before they can cause financial damage.

Due to the local proximity as well as thematic intersections of the two companies, a close and trusting contact already developed when the two companies met for the first time at Gamescom 2019, which was finally crowned by the official signature of an agreement in September 2020. Although WHOW Games already had customer identification solutions in place, these were in-house developments born out of necessity and were soon no longer able to cope with the rapid growth of the game developer. After initial discussions and a short test phase, the decision-makers at WHOW Games were quickly convinced of the advantages of RISK IDENT’s FRIDA and DEVICE IDENT solutions.

“Already the first weeks of our cooperation showed us the advantages of a professional fraud prevention solution. With direct debits alone, which account for the majority of our sales, we have been able to reduce more than 2/3 of our defaults thanks to RISK IDENT” praises Nils Plohmann, Head of Payment at WHOW Games the good cooperation. We at WHOW Games appreciate not only the sophisticated solutions, but above all the close exchange with our contacts.”

The increasing revenues of the online games industry from year to year as well as the natural susceptibility to fraud and identity theft on the Internet do not only arouse the desires of professional cyber criminals. Time and again, it is the players themselves who seek to gain an unlawful advantage through fraudulent activities. It often happens that players buy virtual chips via a third-party or uncovered account. As a result, the corresponding direct debit must be reversed. To eliminate this time-consuming, expensive and sometimes futile process in the future, the device information of suspicious customers is examined beforehand. This information is then merged with the transaction data of the fraudsters. The real-time analysis tool FRIDA uses machine-learning-based algorithms to identify suspicious patterns and convict online fraudsters before they can carry out their deed. This makes it possible for the platform operator to prevent financial damages and time-consuming recoveries in advance.

“Online gaming is an industry of the future that inspires many millions of gamers every year. As a specialist in securing online payment methods, we see ourselves as a natural partner for game developers and platform operators,” says Christian Grundmann, Director Sales & Business Development at RISK IDENT, describing the good synergies with WHOW Games, and concludes, “In no other sector is the focus so strongly on virtual goods and electronic payments as in online games. However, the rules of the game in the virtual space are completely different from those in the physical world. With our proven solutions, we believe we are ideally positioned to secure transactions in the emerging online ecosystems. At RISK IDENT, we can help all online aspirants build a solid and fraud-proof business foundation with our expertise.”

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The fraud prevention methods we use to determine fraudulent cases in motor vehicle financing include pattern recognition, the exchange of data from credit agencies and the control of reactions to suspicious cases. Because the damage to individual cases is usually too high to collect enough for analysis and the number of cases by different fraudsters is usually too low, machine learning processes can only be used to a limited extent for fraud management in vehicle financing. Therefore, expert knowledge that can be skillfully translated into rules is necessary.

If you, as a bank or financing service provider, don’t have the ability to carry out complete document review prior to application approval, then other parameters can be used to identify problematic points, including: trends in sales figures, information from previous decisions and data from previous payment disruptions. The response to suspicious cases can be automated or controlled manually using risk score values. In the case of manual measures, however, the goal should be to minimize customer disturbance as much as possible. Quick checks are made possible by ensuring that your employees have all relevant information in one interface and can directly initiate any necessary fraud prevention measures.

RISK IDENT has a data pool that provides information on devices that have previously been used for fraud, and we can use this information to suss out whether or not those devices are being used for transactions on your site. In addition, the end devices themselves can often provide useful clues, for instance when their information does not match the customer data or customer behavior on file.

In order to prevent losses, it’s important to respond to suspicious cases effectively. In the complete chain of online purchase to delivery, for example, you have the ability to offer a secure payment method — and later, retailers and logistics can prevent dispatch and delivery. This entire process is based on a broad exchange of information, which feeds our software with the data necessary to quickly detect and halt ever-changing fraud patterns.

For large retailers who have an abundance of data, we can configure individual rule sets that are optimized in accordance with attack patterns. But we also offer best practice rule sets for smaller businesses. In both cases, fraud prevention benefits your customers and gives your business a competitive advantage. Everyone wins — except for scammers.

Reactions to suspicious cases can be largely automated in order to ensure a smooth customer experience. For example, questionable applications can be temporarily paused until the customer provides additional documentation, identification or account information that can help you determine if the application is fraudulent. (As a rule, fraudsters will not respond to your request for further information.) Risk scores and service levels can then be examined in manual processing.

The post-processing of any suspicious cases is particularly important, as recognized fraud attempts can be incorporated into the analysis and will help with the quick detection of new fraud patterns in the future. The knowledge gained will be shared with the entire DEVICE IDENT community, which enables your business to actively contribute to better fraud management (link to “What is Fraud”) for all participating companies — fraud prevention is not about competitive advantages.