Yaspa secures grant money to develop RG platform

Yaspa, a fintech company, has secured a grant from the UK government and the UK’s innovation agency in particular, to build a new Safer Gambling payments and AI platform, Casino Guru News learned in an email press release.

The grant will allow Yaspa to develop a new web-based B2B platform that will leverage the power of AI and further enhance operators’ ability to detect suspicious betting habits that point to a deeper problem with a player who may be experiencing gambling-related harm or distress.

Yaspa already has some forecasts about how efficient the platform can be, with the company estimating that its new Safer Gambling payments and AI platform could actually make it so that as many as 300,000 problem gamblers are detected and assisted. If successful, these forecasts could significantly help fight the numbers of vulnerable, at-risk, or pathological gamblers.

GambleAware has released a recent account of its online free self-assessment tool which saw as many as 100,000 people since it was launched in April 2023, pointing to a strong interest in harm minimization. As to the platform developed by Yaspa with backing from Innovative UK, the country’s innovation agency, it will use an AI modelling that will be able to detect "the likelihood" of players who are at risk or harm because of their gambling habits.

Yaspa CEO and co-founder James Neville has welcomed this opportunity and said that Innovate UK’s grant will be an important step forward to tackling problem gambling among players and building a tool that ensures that vulnerable consumers are protected.

Neville is also confident that thanks to this financial backing, the platform will become a leader in compliance within the gambling sector, and also help spearhead a meaningful and impactful change within the sector.

"Currently, operators view players at the single operator level, and rely on disruptive checks that risk driving people to grey markets. Yaspa’s frictionless process, combined with a pan-operator view, will transform the experience for operators and players alike," Neville noted.

The United Kingdom has been growing keener to empower third-sector services and parties in providing a variety of tools and monitoring options to help enhance safety measures for vulnerable players.

Yaspa will also collaborate with academics to ensure that the resulting solution that it develops is also optimized to serve the needs of the market and that it meets its intended goal of protecting consumers.

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