PrizePicks Adopts Game-Changing Identity Verification Solution to Accelerate Business Growth while Preventing Fraud

As a leading innovator in skill-based gaming, PrizePicks has a tough growth challenge to solve: creating a trusted environment with the identity verification of the largest swath of the population without posing friction at onboarding. For PrizePicks, that means onboarding harder-to-identify next-gen gamers with a lighter credit history while keeping out those 18 and younger who aren’t legally allowed to engage. This younger demographic tends to have less financial history and therefore requires more advanced capabilities for verifying identity — features that were lacking in PrizePicks’ previous KYC solution. 

As a result, during a period of hypergrowth, PrizePicks was experiencing low auto-approval rates for identity verification. Potential new members that didn’t pass the automated review had to go through an additional, and costly, document verification onboarding step, which was a manual effort managed by an internal group of 15 full-time PrizePicks employees.

“Our KYC provider’s fraud decisioning capabilities were sorely lacking, so we were hamstrung when it came to being agile with onboarding next-gen gamers and capturing fraud at the top of the funnel,” said Jay Deuskar, co-founder and CTO at PrizePicks, adding that “it was creating friction at the start of our member onboarding journey that we needed to address.”

Gaining Comprehensive Identity Verification that Drives Growth

On a mission to find a new identity verification vendor, PrizePicks evaluated three solutions and selected Socure as the stand-out company for its analytical, data-driven approach that delivered top results on the company’s main KPI of increasing auto-approvals. The Socure ID+ platform gives PrizePicks a unified approach for verifying good identities in real time with an end-to-end platform, including Socure KYC, Sigma Identity Fraud, Sigma Synthetic Fraud, and Predictive DocV. 

“One of the things that was attractive about Socure was its comprehensiveness. I loved that Socure had integrated capabilities for KYC, fraud, and document verification, which meant we didn’t have to piece together disparate vendor solutions to achieve our goals. We were impressed with how slick the offering was and the opportunity to orchestrate our identity verification workflows in a single solution,” said Jay.

Optimizing the Member Onboarding Journey 

In a highly competitive gaming market, PrizePicks is hyper focused on giving members the best experience from the first touch point all the way through to the game play. At the start of the member journey, Socure takes a data science-driven approach to verify the identity of new PrizePicks members.      

By applying analytics models that track and correlate identity attributes, such as name, email, phone, address, date of birth, SSN, IP, device, velocity, and network intelligence, the Socure platform produces reliable, consistent, and accurate determinations on the legitimacy of an identity and its relative degree of fraud risk. 

“Our customers are next-generation sports fans who want a sleek and intuitive experience with our platform. Socure has helped us optimize that experience during account onboarding, which is arguably one of the most crucial touchpoints in making sure potential members don’t drop out of the process due to unnecessary friction,” said Jay, adding that “it’s important we get things right early on to develop trust with the customer, and Socure helps us build our credibility from the start with a fast, frictionless, and accurate identity verification process.” 

Socure’s robust approach has enabled PrizePicks to experience double-digit growth in new member auto-approvals, reduce fraud losses, and drive massive growth in customer lifetime value (LTV). Onboarding for the company’s next-gen gaming members has grown significantly, directly contributing to tens of millions of dollars in annual LTV growth. And, as a result of the optimized member onboarding journey, PrizePicks increased customer conversion rates, gaining one million new members in ten months.

Another big win for PrizePicks was its move from a manual to an automated document verification process. Prospective members that fail initial checks are escalated to Socure’s Predictive DocV to digitally verify the authenticity of identity documents, along with selfie analyses to verify that the biometric and the physical identification card photos match.

“Socure enabled us to completely eliminate our manual document verification process and reallocate 100 percent of our 15 team members to other strategic business functions,” explained Jay. “As a result, we experienced huge cost savings and an increase in the efficiency of our internal operations.”

One of the things that was attractive about Socure was its comprehensiveness. I loved that Socure had integrated capabilities for KYC, fraud, and document verification, which meant we didn’t have to piece together disparate vendor solutions to achieve our goals. We were impressed with how slick the offering was and the opportunity to orchestrate our identity verification workflows in a single solution.”

Innovative Data Science Partnership

As a real money skills-based gaming operator, PrizePicks must comply with certain KYC mandates. With Socure, they have gained a frictionless, highly-accurate solution with unmatched coverage in younger demographics. PrizePicks can now demonstrate they have the proper guardrails in place with a continuous KYC and Customer Identification Program (CIP) process that delivers a solid foundation of reliable identification and protection. “Socure has been instrumental in helping us implement procedure and automation for our KYC compliance efforts,” said Jay. 

At its core, PrizePicks is an innovative tech analytics company where data science and predictive modeling are entrenched in the company ethos for building and managing the best customer journey. Socure’s market-leading identity verification and fraud prevention platform driven by advanced AI and ML technologies makes the vendor partnership a great one for PrizePicks. “Socure’s expertise in data science gives us a strategic partner that helps us run experiments, offer predictive modeling on outcomes, and provide suggestions to improve our KYC process and decisioning,” said Jay. “I think that’s one of Socure’s biggest values compared to others in the space, and our Socure team members are some of the best people I’ve ever worked with.” 

Going into Peak Gaming Seasons with Confidence

As Jay points out, “The PrizePicks business is highly seasonal; we’re always thinking ahead of the curve on where the business is going and how to maximize our resources and foster more growth.” As PrizePicks looks to the future, the company has a well-tuned, accurate identity verification process and a strong partner in Socure that’ll readily keep pace and scale with PrizePicks’ innovations.

“As we go into high member acquisition periods like the football season, we’re confident that we’ve got a good partner in Socure helping us to maximize approval rates and business growth that will move new members through the funnel without compromising fraud or the integrity of our ecosystem,” said Jay.