When it comes to online gambling, in many casinos any anonymous person can deposit money and win big. But when it comes to withdrawing your winnings — that is completely another story. You have to be able to verify who you are, before you will be able to hold onto the cold hard cash.
Any half-decent casino will ask for identity verification (except no verification casinos). And there are reasons why even those operating without a license and accepting cryptocurrencies are among them.
Eliminating the Exploitation of Game Bonuses
When a casino offers bonuses for their games, they can be easily manipulated through the usage of multiple accounts, costing a lot of money for the gambling house. Losses can be so high that the casino may be forced out of business.
In order to prevent this exploit, the amount of bonuses per account is limited. And in order to prevent creation of multiple accounts, the casino asks to have your ID verified.
To Ensure Regulations are Followed
When a casino is legal and holds a gambling license, it must also follow the regulations to ensure that no fraud or money laundering occurs. 10-15 years ago, at the advent of online gambling, criminals would deposit dirty money into casinos. And then withdraw them clean “as winnings” after a few spins. Even more serious crime would be terrorist group funding.
So that’s why a part of the regulations is identity verification of players requesting withdrawal of winnings.
Putting a Stop to Crimes Associated With Money
It was a common practice to make players to withdraw funds using the exact method they used for deposit. However, the inconvenience of this is the reason why many casinos switched to ID verification to ensure that the funds are reaching the intended person.
Without such verification, there is no way to know if the withdrawal was made by the real account owner or some hacker, who hijacked it.
Ensuring that Underage Gambling Does Not Occur
Casinos are constantly on the lookout for underage gamblers and the fact that they somehow sneak in is something to be concerned about. Besides being a moral nightmare, it can easily cause a casino to develop a bad name for themselves.
Due to the ease of creating a fake account, many minors can input fake information that makes them older than they really are. So the casino verifies IDs in order to put a stop to it.
Preventing Compulsive Gambling
When a casino is able to identify players, it can also monitor their playing habits. This monitoring will allow to control the amount of time a player can play and cut off access when a problem with habitual gambling starts to occur.
So even if ID verification looks like a nuisance at a first glance, it actually plays several important roles. Being able to verify ID is usually not an issue and most gamblers like the idea because of the security it provides. Casinos should strive to make the checks quick and convenient though.