As iGB Live day one gets into full swing, Max Collinge, Head of Product at Yaspa and Simo Dragicevic, The Game Safety Institute Co-Founder, sat down to discuss not only how gambling markers are evolving in the industry, but how banking institutions can also play a part in protecting players.
Despite open banking being around for many years, the UK has been slow in picking it up. According to Collinge, this is due to the emergence of many other 'new' verticals all at once, including Apple Pay and 'Buy Now, Pay Later' models. As of 2025, one in five people in the UK are involved with open banking and, as familiarity grows, Collinge expects these numbers to keep growing.
But what does this have to do with the industry? Well, Yaspa has recently conducted a study into gambling markers. This was done by taking consensual data from HSBC and Monzo and analysing it. Straight off the bat, they could see that players who were part of moderate and extreme concern groups were gambling across multiple operators at once. Some operators are trying to be proactive with their sustainable gambling and are using AI technology to detect whether a player is spending too much, but Yaspa believes that banks should get involved too.
Now, Yaspa has been working with the UK's Gambling Commission to analyse the transactional data and flag potential behavioural insights. For example, if they can see from a user's bank statements that they've lost their job, the team could flag this to operators as a warning. The operator could then monitor player activity to see if it worsens after a significant life event.Yaspa now wants to also include player input and reflect this against objective data. For example, asking players whether they feel they are experiencing gambling harm versus their banking data. Yaspa hopes to publish their results during H2 in regards to this.
Good to know: Yaspa has completed a Series A investment of £12m led by Discerning Capital, who recently invested in Midnite
In order to access data, Yaspa needs to talk to players and create a relationship of trust with them. This is something similar with the onboarding process with operators.There is always pressure for AML/CFT checks, industry pressure on affordability checks, and the Gambling Commission wants to introduce credit bureau checks too.
However, open banking has been introduced as a way for frictionless checks. You don't want to introduce a barrier between a customer who is creating a relationship with an operator, as this can cause the player to turn away. At the moment, operators are seeing adoption rates of 10-15% once the player is asked to upload a bank statement - but this can increase to 40% with an open banking link.
Not only does this create a chance to change the player lifecycle, but the banks can then provide operators with important behavioural data once the player is signed up. Is this too much information for operators? It's not going to be something that every operator will want to adopt, according to Yaspa, but it has been taken up by some of them already. Progess is inevitable and both Collinge and Dragicevic believe this could be a change to get ahead of the curve.
