Casino Oct08 P22-24 10/2/08 10:30 am Page 22
EXPERIAN
Experian
A new age
dawns…
Not a new age, exactly – but a new way of looking at age verification
for land-based casinos. Casino International found out more…
E
xperian is well-known among consumers as
a credit reference agency, where one can
Experian’s
obtain a credit report on request for a
James Blake
small fee. There's a lot more to the
company than that, and their expertise
reaches far and wide. Said expertise is now being
applied, with some success, to casinos for the
purposes of age verification. James Blake, Head of
Authentication, spoke to Casino International about
what they can offer the modern casino…
Casino International: What is Experian? What
skills do you have in age authentication?
James Blake: Experian is a vast organisation with
offices across the globe – in the UK, Europe, the
Americas, India, Asia, Far East, everywhere. The
solutions we actually offer now go beyond credit, and
have done for many years. The division I work in it will also flag if there are any fraud, money
specialises in electronic ID which really centres laundering or under-age risks, whatever the criteria
around fraud prevention, anti money laundering, and may be.
proving that an individual is who they claim to be.
That then expanded out into age verification client CI: How long does this process take?
requirements changed, In the case of the gaming
industry, the Gambling Act came in, which required JB: It’s sub- two seconds for a response from us –
organisations to verify that people are who they claim the only hold-up is how long it might take a member
to be, that they’re not fraudsters, they’re not money of staff to type the details in. When we did some
launderers, they’re also old enough to enter a casino, analysis, one of the benefits the casino found was
or an online gaming environment. speeding up that application process; instead of
having to fill out your full name and the rest of your
CI: Assuming I’m an operator, how does this details and those be typed in, they only had to put in
work? a postcode and house number. That information is
then returned straight away and the date of birth is
JB: The way it works currently in any of the casinos input, and at that point we then send it out. It was
that use our solution is, I go in, and they take my taking around about ten seconds to fill out the
personal information from me. They [on the front information, and a two-second response rate from
desk] take my postcode; from that postcode, we would there.
take the full address of the individual with their
name, we’d catch that information, we’d then ask CI: If someone enters a casino and wants to
their date of birth. Depending on the circumstances, join, what mechanisms are you using to validate
we may also ask for other information such as time at who that person is? Photo ID is obviously
address, previous address or mother’s maiden name. forgeable, so it might not be their details – how
Once that information is taken we send that to our do you reconcile that?
data centre in Nottingham to verify the information
they’ve given against a number of unique data JB: Experian compares the data submitted by the
sources, and that result would be returned, which will customer against its anti-fraud databases. We look for
tell you whether that person is who they claim to be; any inconsistencies in the data that might indicate
22 OCTOBER 2008
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