Gambling operators face a seriously difficult balancing act when it comes to ensuring that their customers can seamlessly sign up and begin playing, while also meeting the detailed and varied demands of anti-money laundering (AML) compliance. 

The online gambling experience has matured significantly since its infancy and with that comes an increase in the level of customer expectation. 

Gamblers are looking for the easiest signup experience and are unlikely to see the need for AML checks and other compliance hurdles as valid excuses. 

Operators risk losing out to rivals if they make sign up processes slow and burdensome, or worse, players will migrate to the black market where compliance requirements are thrown out of the window. 

In the same breath, regulators, government agencies and AML watchdogs are constantly raising the bar for what constitutes good KYC and crime prevention. 

Gambling companies are responding positively to these requirements. Data from the European Betting and Gaming Association shows that its members filed 31,000 suspicious transaction reports in 2024, that's almost double the amount submitted in 2022. 

Balance 

With these two competing demands only increasing in their intensity, the industry is looking for creative and tech-powered ways to find a path between them. 

Beefing up their data science credentials is one such way to accomplish this. By applying the latest techniques in collecting and analysing transaction and personal data, operators can make faster decisions about AML risks. 

A well functioning data science team aggregates various data points to do this. 

• Transaction data: Deposits, withdrawals, bets, wins, losses, timestamps and payment channels. 
• Player behavioural data: Session lengths, game types, stake sizes, frequency, time of day and device fingerprints. 
• Identity and network data: Name, address, email, phone, IP, KYC documents and links to other accounts. 

The difficulty is that this can only be accomplished by trained professionals and while some teams within gambling companies may have some overlapping skills, in large part this is a new frontier for the sector. 

Which is why hiring teams and recruitment partners are increasingly looking to the fintech space to find talent that can deliver high impact data science. Risk data analysts in particular are in high demand in the current market. 

That places them in direct competition with banks and payments companies when it comes to recruitment. This might ramp up costs vs. traditional hiring journeys, but it also significantly broadens the available pool of talent for gambling firms that are willing to step out of their comfort zone. 

KYC 

At Pentasia and PaymentGenes we're seeing sharply rising demand for staff in KYC and onboarding, with an increased tendency to look for fintech skills over gambling experience. 

That's because the techniques needed to keep onboarding as low friction as possible, while still staying within the bounds of AML and safer gambling compliance have more in common with the anti-fraud work of the banking industry. 

This includes taking advantage of open banking to verify identity quickly, potentially moving straight to deposit via an embedded finance model. 

A demand for traditional banking and fintech skills is reflected in the increased demand for Fraud Strategy talent 

This is an area of compliance that has not typically been highly emphasised in the gambling sphere, but is becoming increasingly relevant as the rules get tougher and criminals get smarter. 

In particular, the growing presence of cryptocurrencies in the world of gambling brings a fresh area of risk into the betting and igaming industry. 

Unlike some would have you believe, crypto transactions are not anonymous and in most cases are very traceable. However it takes a separate set of skills to do so and to understand the risks involved in accepting crypto. 

With jurisdictions like the UK looking at moving to a regime that allows for stablecoin gambling, there has been a noticeable uptick in the demand for financial-crime specialists in the industry. 

Again, smart operators are looking to the financial services sector to find the best talent. 

Bonus cash 

The evolving world of fraud in online gambling is also impacting the way that operators think about bonusing and other complimentary offers. 

In particular, there is a focus on how the kinds of promotions operators create can make life harder for their AML teams. 

Large, easy‑to‑claim bonuses and deposit match offers can be used to layer illicit funds. Criminals deposit dirty money and then use the bonus offer to justify unusual activity, which can bypass an unobservant AML department. 

They then withdraw the "clean" cash as winnings or bonus payouts. 

There is an increased risk profile around bonuses that are tied to high wagering volume. This is because they encourage the rapid deposit‑bet‑withdrawal patterns typical of money laundering, which could easily be passed off as conventional play. 

Gamified retention tactics like daily missions streaks, and leaderboards can push players to increase activity artificially. For a money launderer, this is useful because they can run predefined tasks, generate transaction history, and then exit with a "clean" balance, making the laundering appear like normal gambling. 

High‑roller loyalty programmes, cashback, and exclusive comps can also incentivise mule accounts or professional launderers who want big, frequent payouts and high limits. 

If VIP treatment is purely based on volume without adequate source of funds checks, it becomes a risk multiplier. The more generous the comp, the more attractive the operator is to bad actors. 

This kind of advanced thinking is becoming typical, and expected, of a modern online gambling operation. 

This owes something to the overall maturation of the sector, but also an influx of talent from the fintech and banking communities noticeably levelling-up the AML credentials of the average operator.