The data was gathered from gambling payment companies, including almost 100 million individual transactions from across a year’s worth of activity.
The payment behaviour was analysed on several factors, including the frequency, amount, intensity and variability of transactions.
The study also analysed the time of day the deposits were made and the rate at which they were declined.
IGI researchers found that this transactional data could be categorised into three distinct patterns of harmful payment behaviour.
While 88% of players showed no behaviour that correlated with problem gambling, 12% of them were found to exhibit unsustainable and harmful behaviour.
The largest of the three clusters, accounting for 8% of the flagged players, had the lowest number of withdrawals per deposit, sitting at one withdrawal for every 53 deposits.
The second cluster, with 2.5% of the problematic sample, had an average of 15 deposits per week. These had both the highest deposit and deposit rejection activity.
The final cluster of 1.2%, had the highest level of deposit and withdrawal volumes.
Sightline hopes to use this research to reduce the harm problem gambling presents to players.
Dr. Kasra Ghaharian, Senior Research Fellow at IGI, said: “As digital payments have helped fuel the immense growth of online sports betting and online casino, understanding how digital transaction data can identify potentially harmful behaviours is critical for helping people wager responsibly.
“I want to thank Sightline for the opportunity to work on such an important project. These findings will be critical for building interventions for people who have or might develop a problem.”
Omer Sattar, Co-CEO & Co-Founder at Sightline, said: “This research will serve as a foundation to build next-generation solutions that help identify customers who might have issues with their gambling behaviour.”
