In the four years since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on online sports betting, forces in the payments industry struggled to create a streamlined and secure path for using credit and debit cards for wagering at these sites.
Initially when participants tried to use credit and debit cards to deposit funds at online sportsbooks, many banks routinely flagged the transactions as risky because of high rates of fraud and chargebacks.
But the pandemic drove online sports betting’s popularity, and the last few years have seen significant improvements in blocking fraud within the sector. A cadre of payments providers including FIS, American Express’ subsidiary Accertify and U.K.-based Paysafe are now seeing strong growth by providing payment-card fraud protection in the booming U.S. online sports-betting sector.
