Björn Fuchs is the Chief Digital Officer of Janshen-Hahnraths Group, Fair Play Casino’s parent company. The decision to enter into a close partnership with CDDN to optimise the “registration flow” for online players at Fair Play was taken under his leadership. What’s more, it was not a given, because Fuchs would have been just as happy to keep those activities inhouse. But he is satisfied with the partnership. “Although it is time to dot the i’s.”

Fuchs has a long track record in digital innovation. Before joining Janshen-Hahnraths in 2020 to oversee the casino’s entry to the online gambling market, Fuchs worked for media company RTL for almost 20 years, where he experienced the advent of the internet as well as mobile telephony from up close and integrated these into RTL’s business model. “My primary assignment when I joined Fair Play and Janshen-Hahnraths was to obtain a licence for the Dutch online market as soon as it opened in 2021. We had already gained some cautious experience overseas, but not on such a large scale.”

From the first day Fair Play Casinos went live online – on 8 October 2021 – Fuchs says it was like working in a pressure cooker. “Thanks to our experience abroad, we already had a good registration system for online players. But Dutch law is considerably more demanding, I will explain shortly. It is with good reason that – over a year and a half after the opening of the online market – only 20 companies have obtained a licence. I would estimate that two thirds of applicants cannot meet the requirements, or drop out during the process because they find it too difficult.”

Technical challenges

Despite the fact Fuchs had run into Martijn de Boer, founder and director of CDDN, several times during that turbulent time – at the Gaming trade fair in Holland, amongst others – and was aware of the fact CDDN was managing the onboarding process for a growing number of online casinos with VerifyMe, it took until the end of 2022 before Fair Play Casinos also started working with CDDN. “We had planned to optimise our registration process for some time. The combination of other technical challenges and priorities, as well as the lack of appropriately qualified staff finally dictated that we opted for an external solution last year. We joined forces with CDDN in December.”

What helped Fuchs make the decision to opt for VerifyMe was that another operator, active on the same Finnplay online gaming platform, had also opted for the CDDN solution shortly before that. “All the pieces of the puzzle then fell into place and we were able to integrate everything quite quickly”, Fuchs explains.

Dotting the i’s

“Although the ‘plug & play’ claim is not entirely accurate as far as I’m concerned. But that claim naturally rarely is. However the basis is there and it works very well. We found that when we wanted to customise, things were rather more rigid than we had hoped. More work was needed to achieve the conversion we were striving for.”

Looking back, Fuchs is satisfied with the partnership. “A number of integrations we have introduced have not yet taken effect on the Finnplay platform. It turns out that is difficult to achieve. I am hopeful it will work out though. We just need to dot the ‘I’s’.”

CDDN now serves over half the online casinos operating on the Dutch market with VerifyMe. Does Fuchs not regard that as a risk? That all the expertise is in the hands of one party? “No, not at all”, he anwers. “You do business based on trust and in doing so, you assume integrity. What is far more important, is that you are able to divide before you can multiply. I often used to get annoyed with the almost spastic way competitors operated in the media industry. That led to everyone always fighting with one another while other players entered our market almost unnoticed. We need to avoid that in this market.”