Legitimuz flags five onboarding mistakes operators still make in Brazil’s betting market

Compliance and fraud-prevention specialists say many operators still get onboarding wrong at the exact moment it matters most: the first real touchpoint with the bettor, and the first line of defense against fraud, fake accounts, and underage access. In Brazil, the pressure is rising, but the basic mistakes are still the same.

1. Age verification is still being treated like a form field, not a technology problem. A checkbox or a self-declared “I am over 18” box does not prove anything, and in Brazil that approach has lost legal validity. The market that does this properly combines facial biometrics with document verification, with the level of scrutiny matched to the risk of the content or product being offered.
2. Identity checks are often done only at signup, then forgotten. That is convenient, and also how compromised, sold, or transferred accounts slip through months after the initial verification. The recommendation is to treat identity verification as a continuous process, with checks at strategic points such as large withdrawals, device changes, and updates to registration data.
3. Operators still apply the same friction to every user. On paper, that sounds fair. In practice, it either drives legitimate users away with too much friction or lets higher-risk users pass through controls that were designed for the general public. The more effective approach is risk-based verification, where the level of checks changes based on signals such as transaction value, geolocation, device history, or the type of product being accessed.
4. Deepfake and image-manipulation fraud is no longer theoretical. With generative AI moving fast, operators that rely only on a static selfie are exposed. Without liveness detection and manipulation-detection tools, they are leaving a gap that legacy systems were never really built to handle.
5. The bigger mistake underneath all of this is balance: some operators optimize for conversion at the expense of security, while others do the opposite and make onboarding so heavy that they kill the sign-up flow. The source’s point is blunt enough: if you do not find the balance, you end up with either weak controls or abandoned applications.

For PSPs, acquirers, and banks serving Brazilian betting operators, this is the operating reality: onboarding is not just a UX flow, it is the first fraud-control layer and a direct regulatory risk point. The vendor stack around it now matters as much as the sign-up funnel itself.