Coming Face to Face with Biometrics Mateja Popovic, CEO at Fincore
Sportsbook operators have long sought to increase convenience, seamless sign in and better service in retail betting, especially with player interaction through self-service kiosks. They also continue to seek better solutions for managing responsible gambling and compliance, while truly understanding retail players and their behaviours in order to deliver a personalised experience.
Advanced technologies such as biometrics enable many of these challenges to be overcome, opening up opportunities for retail sportsbook operators to better engage with customer needs and monitor their players from each of a personal, convenience and a safe gaming perspective. Understanding behaviours helps take the player experience to the next level.
One company that has leveraged the capabilities of biometrics in gaming is Fincore, which has just signed a major deal to supply retail sportsbook platform provider SB22 with its facial recognition solution. To learn more about the partnership and how biometrics are changing the game for retail operators, we sat down with Mateja Popovic, CEO at Fincore.
You recently signed an “industry first” biometrics partnership with retail platform provider, SB22. Can you tell us more about that deal?
“SB22 is using our powerful facial recognition solution in its proprietary self-service betting kiosks, allowing its operator partners across North America to avail opportunities and overcome key challenges in identifying players. Fincore’s biometrics solution empowers operators through cutting-edge facial recognition technology to enhance security, efficiency and customer insight, strengthening responsible gambling and compliance, improving the user experience and opening up opportunities to drive higher revenues from each retail player. It is highly customisable and can be tailored to individual requirements, as has been done with SB22, with the Fincore team tailoring our algorithms to drive optimal performance.”
What challenges do retail operators face when it comes to identifying players?
“There is a high level of anonymity that comes with retail betting, especially with self-service kiosks. This makes it difficult for operators to manage factors such as fraud prevention, responsible gambling and analysing player behaviour. For example, it is incredibly tough to identify excluded players or those not permitted to bet under local laws and regulations, such as professional sports players and officials. Because it’s hard to identify players, retail operators miss opportunities to monitor and analyse player behaviour to improve the user experience and identify areas where they can increase the lifetime value.”
How do biometrics technologies such as your solution help to overcome these challenges?
“Fincore offers an advanced facial recognition system with actionable events based on real-time data and detection, which is compatible with any modern retail solution. This can be used for fraud prevention and social responsibility, identifying players who have self-excluded or who are not permitted to bet, such as the examples given above. It also allows for player tracking, capturing the player’s facial coding and tagging the customer through their facial ID to make them “known” to the operator. This allows for in-depth analysis of previously anonymous players and for a better understanding of who is using the kiosk, all in real-time.
“The combination of real-time data and in-depth analysis of anonymous players is revolutionary. When used with alerts, operators can deliver a more personalised experience through recommendations and tailored pricing, driving engagement in ways that have never been achieved before.”
What does Fincore have in store for the coming months?
“In addition to our biometric solution, we offer a complete universe of gaming software via our TRI range designed to help operators unlock the full potential of their business. We are looking to grow our network of operator partners alongside those using our biometrics solution. Our TRI platform is built on the latest open-source technology and is truly modular, a customer can take any individual modules such as TRI Sportsbook, TRI Gaming (RGS), TRI Hub which is our player account management platform, TRI Pay and TRI Bon or buy them all together (or even break it down further). We already have several operators using different TRI modules but have recently signed a deal to provide a big-name African operator with the whole package as it looks to drive growth across the region – more on this to come. Expect more deals like these as well as updates to our cutting-edge technologies and solutions.
“You can meet Fincore and learn more about our FR Solution at ICE 2024.”
