Sumsub Data Shows AI Pressure on iGaming Fraud Teams

Sumsub says iGaming fraud is becoming larger, slower to review, and harder to stop at signup. Its 2026 report points to AI-assisted attacks across payments, identity checks, and player accounts.

The clearest warning in Sumsub’s 2026 iGaming Fraud Report is operational. In the report, fraudulent verification attempts took 4.6 times longer than legitimate ones.

The report is based on more than 3 million fraud attempts observed in iGaming verifications. The period of study includes Q1 2024-Q1 2026, combined with more than 30 interviews with industry experts and fraud and compliance specialists.

Fraud Checks Take Longer

Now, for gambling operators, the question is not only how to block a fake ID at the registration stage. Fraudsters test various stages of the user’s lifecycle. Sumsub identified the following aspects as the main pressure points:

Bonus abuse;
Opposite betting;
Bot creation;
Multi-accounting;
Prediction-market manipulation;
Liveness bypass attempts.

Suspicious Payments Get Larger

The financial picture is also sharper. Suspicious transaction volumes in iGaming grew 4.5 times between Q1 2025 and Q1 2026.

The average suspicious transaction value has grown from $3,960 to $6,500. This means that each successful or near-successful attack can put a larger amount under review. At the same time, the costs of weak control after onboarding increase as well.

Global iGaming fraud rate hit 1.53% of attempts to verify a customer in Q1 2026. According to Sumsub, it grew by 18% y-o-y and even 40% from 2024.

AI makes the creation of fakes easier. Synthetic faces, manipulated documents, face swapping, templating, and mass account generation are examples mentioned in the report. Though many attempts can be of low quality, their large number can slow fraud teams and manual control queues.

Regions Show Different Risks

The data also illustrates regional disparities. Africa recorded the highest fraud rate at 2.54%, while North America had the lowest at 0.44%. That creates a 5.8 times gap between the most and least exposed regions.

In Europe, there was a steady number of attempts, with a fraud rate of 1.14%. However, the nature of fraud was different. Deepfakes made up for 41% of fraud cases in Europe and accounted for the highest share in the world.

The most significant progress can be seen in APAC. The fraud rate in this region decreased from 3.49% in 2024 to 1.92%. Sumsub also noted that liveness attacks accounted for 66% of detected fraud in APAC.

Operators Face a Monitoring Test

One-off KYC checks have become too limited for the existing fraud cycle. Operators need to link identity, device, behavior, and transaction signals across the whole account lifecycle.

The stronger operators will be the ones that treat fraud controls as live infrastructure rather than a one-time compliance gate. AI has made cheap attack volume easier. The market response now has to be faster review logic, cleaner risk scoring, and better monitoring after the first deposit.