Know Your Customer regulations require sportsbooks to verify the age and identity of every customer. In practice, this means every online sportsbook and mobile betting app will eventually ask you to provide documentation confirming your identity.

Know Your Customer Sportsbook Policies

BettingUSA frequently receives e-mails from readers asking why one sportsbook or another asked them to provide the last four digits of their social security number or submit a picture of their photo ID.

The simple answer to questions related to this topic is that licensed sportsbooks have no choice. Each state takes its own approach to sports betting, but the two things all states have in common are Know Your Customer (KYC) rules and anti-money laundering (AML) regulations. Sportsbooks in every state are required by law to implement KYC and AML policies.

Additionally, sportsbooks wish to protect themselves from fraud and ensure they remain in good standing with state regulators. To that end, licensed betting sites and online casinos conduct KYC checks to verify every customer’s age and identity.

Why Do States Implement KYC Regulations?

Legal sports betting is a high-stakes industry in more ways than one. The vast sums of money that flow to and from online sportsbooks with no face-to-face interaction make the sports betting industry an attractive target for a wide range of bad actors.

Many in the US still view sports betting with a degree of skepticism, and pro-gaming lawmakers have every incentive to protect the integrity of the industry and sports in the USA. Thus, it is a high priority among lawmakers to prevent access to identity thieves, minors, sports league insiders, and problem gamblers.

Additionally, states craft their laws to ensure operators comply with the federal Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 (BSA). The Patriot Act of 2001 amended the BSA to require KYC policies for “financial institutions,” which apply to almost every business that touches money.

To summarize, states implement KYC sports betting regulations for numerous reasons:

  • To comply with the Bank Secrecy Act
  • To protect the integrity of sports in the US
  • To ensure all bettors are of legal age
  • To ensure all customers are who they say they are (prevent identity theft and fraud)
  • To combat money laundering
  • To prevent access to impermissible bettors such as employees of sports leagues and problem gamblers who have self-excluded

Why Am I Being Asked to Provide The Last Four Digits Of My SSN?

Licensed sportsbooks must comply with KYC regulations at the risk of losing their licenses, and their methods of identity verification must be reliable. Your social security number (SSN) is one of the most valuable pieces of information a sportsbook can collect to confirm your age and identity.

Sportsbooks can crosscheck your SSN against public and private databases to ensure it aligns with the name, age, and address you provided when signing up for an account. In most states, local regulations require licensed sportsbooks to collect either the full or partial SSN of every new customer.

For example, Michigan’s sports betting regulations (R 432.755) require operators to collect the following information from all customers:

  • Legal name
  • Date of birth
  • SSN, last four digits of the customer’s SSN, or equivalent such as passport number or taxpayer identification number
  • Customer’s sports betting account username
  • E-mail address
  • Phone number

Regulations in Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and almost every other state require operators to obtain full or partial SSNs when establishing accounts for their customers.

Iowa, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon do not specifically list the SSN as a piece of information operators must collect. However, all of them leave the door open by directing operators to collect whatever information is necessary to confirm each customer’s identity. Even in these states, bettors can expect to be asked for their SSN because it is so effective for conducting reliable KYC checks.

New Mexico and North Carolina are the only states that do not address KYC at all, but that is because state law does not address sports betting in the first place. In both states, tribal gaming groups may offer sports betting under existing compacts with the state.

Is It Safe To Share Personal Information With Online Sportsbooks?

Sharing your personal details with an online sportsbook is about as safe as sharing them with a banking institution or billing payments provider.

Of course, there will always be some level of risk associated with online transactions. However, state law holds licensed sportsbooks to high standards of security and data management.

For example, Colorado sports betting regulations dedicate page after page to outlining the security requirements for mobile betting operations. Just one of Colorado’s many sports betting security requirements reads as follows:

All online sports betting systems authorized by the Division and these Rules shall be designed to ensure the integrity and confidentiality of all patron communications and ensure the proper identification of the sender and receiver of all communications. If communications are performed across a public or third-party network, the system shall either encrypt the data packets or utilize a secure communications protocol to ensure the integrity and confidentiality of the transmission.

Security requirements are much the same in every other state with legal sports betting. No online system in the world is 100% safe, but sports betting is up there with banks and other financial institutions for customer information security.

The Challenges Of Accurate “Know Your Customer” Policies

Identity verification is usually a quick and painless experience from the gambler’s perspective, but a lot happens behind the scenes to make the process as foolproof and fast as possible.

Here’s how Seth Palanksy of Conscious Gaming once described the challenge of accurate identity verification when discussing impermissible bettors with BettingUSA:

The patchwork of rules that differ from state to state presents another challenge. As operators are required to conform to the regulations in the state they are operating in, they must set up procedures to manage to those specifics. This can mean operating in 20 different states requires keeping 20 different lists and mechanisms to compile and exchange data for those lists. It is unwieldy and burdensome, and prone to errors and omissions.

Bad data. Garbage in, garbage out. Are Jim Smith, Jimmy Smith, and James Smith the same person, or three different people? While studying other markets, it became clear the data set used to identify an individual created fuzzy logic and bad data in a lot of cases. The regulatory requirements associated with data collection during account creation ensure that US operators can generate a unique and de-identified player ID for each user, which can be leveraged on a nationwide basis.

How Do Betting Sites Verify My Identity?

Consumer and voting data firm Aristotle provides KYC services on behalf of many of the country’s licensed gaming operators. In an interview with BettingUSA’s Steve Ruddock, Michael Bolcerek of Aristotle explained the basic process behind verifying new customers:

The customer will submit their name, their address, their date of birth, and either the full SSN or final four of their SSN. Then we’ll verify that information against a variety of different data assets and verify the details submitted, or if we can’t, notify the operator that they’ll need to use another methodology.

During the onboarding process, we verify identity through things like government lists and credit bureaus [this is similar to an online credit card application process]. We’ll also check anti-money laundering lists or for a politically exposed person. We do that to verify that people are not on a terrorist watch list or a financial OFAC list. And some states flag people in arrears with child support.

And while we aren’t currently doing this for operators, they do check athlete and referee lists.

Those are some of the preliminary, initial KYC checks.

Many sportsbooks also choose to conduct more in-depth identity checks when customers withdraw from their accounts for the first time. Fraud is a significant concern for betting sites and online casinos, so it is not uncommon for an operator to ask customers to submit an image of their state-issued ID.

How Do I Upload An Image Of My Photo ID?

Sportsbooks ask for photo ID to further confirm the identity of each customer. This may occur when you first sign up for an account if the sportsbook is unable to fully verify your identity with your SSN and other details, or it may occur when depositing or cashing out for the first time.

The exact process for uploading a photo ID varies a bit from one sportsbook to the next, but they usually walk customers through the process step by step.

In most cases, you can simply lay your ID on a table and use your mobile phone to take a photo of the front and back of your ID. Then, you can login to your betting account either online or through your sportsbook’s mobile app, where you will be prompted to upload the image. Some smaller operators may ask you to e-mail a copy of your ID to their customer support address.

Overall, uploading photo verification is a quick process. The biggest sticking point you’re likely to run into is your phone’s camera taking photos that are too high quality – some sportsbooks ask that photo ID uploads be 5 MB or less, for example. If you have any problems getting started, a quick call or e-mail to your sportsbook’s customer support team will get you sorted in no time.

Important: Do Not Respond To Unsolicited Requests For Information Or Photo ID Images

The biggest risk of identity theft and confidential information leakage comes not from lax security standards employed by licensed sportsbooks, but from illegal betting sites and bad actors who operate from outside the regulated environment.

Information security is just one of the many reasons it pays to stick exclusively with licensed betting apps and websites.

Additionally, even bettors who only do business with licensed operators should be aware. If you receive an e-mail asking for private information or a copy of your photo ID, do not respond to that e-mail.

Instead, log in to the official betting app or open a new browser window and manually type the URL of your sportsbook’s website to log in. If the sportsbook needs to confirm your identity, it will let you know upon logging in.

Additionally, you can visit your sportsbook’s official website to find its real customer support e-mail address or phone number to confirm whether the information request is valid.

KYC Betting FAQ

Federal laws like the Bank Secrecy Act and Patriot Act require institutions that handle large amounts of money to make a reasonable effort to ensure that it is not being laundered through their business. The practice involves banks and similar companies researching where cash originated and if the customer has the means of supporting the transactions. Online betting sites must follow these procedures or potentially face fines.

Online sportsbooks use many methods to verify the identity of their customers for security purposes. In some cases, this is done electronically. In other instances, the research is inconclusive. When that occurs, the player must prove their identity.

Online sportsbooks often use the last four digits of your SSN to confirm your identity. A database combines your birthdate, address, and other identifiable information to fulfill the KYC process. The full SSN is not needed for this process in most cases.

If you give the wrong address, move often, or have a common name, the online sportsbook may not be able to verify your identity. Make sure that the information you provided is accurate. If it is, contact the site’s security department for a solution.

Know Your Customer (KYC) laws require that financial institutions like online sportsbooks verify the identity of their players. This compliance helps the betting site process payments securely and safely. It also helps prevent underage gambling.

Consumers are able to dispute credit and debit card purchases they did not make. To help prevent fraud, online sportsbooks often ask players to submit a copy of their credit or debit card, as well as sign an authorization letter, to protect against a dispute down the road.

Make sure that the email address you receive it from is the one registered with the site, the return email address is a domain related to where you deposited, and that any links on the email go there. If you have any suspicions that it may be a scam, contact the betting site’s support through its website before submitting any documents.