Bonus Abuse

Bonus programs are a proven way to attract and retain customers — especially in iGaming, where 83% of users say offers influence their decisions. But while incentives drive growth, they also attract fraud.

Bonus abuse is rising, costing gaming companies up to 15% of gross revenue. Often, the damage is done before it’s even detected — with corrupted data, skewed acquisition metrics, and increased compliance risks.

What Is Bonus Abuse?

Bonus abuse occurs when individuals or organized groups exploit promotional offers like sign-up bonuses, referral incentives or welcome packages. This might involve using fake identities, multiple accounts or technical loopholes to claim the same bonus multiple times or to circumvent eligibility rules.

How Does Bonus Abuse Work?

Bonus abuse is a systemic threat driven by sophisticated fraud rings and savvy individuals manipulating promotional loopholes. Fraudsters deploy various techniques, including identity spoofing, VPNs to mask geolocation, device farms and bots to exploit systems. They often use synthetic IDs or stolen data to create fake profiles and repeatedly claim bonuses.

Industries Most Affected by Bonus Abuse

Bonus abuse is rampant in iGaming, fintech, eCommerce and digital banking. These industries rely heavily on sign-up and promotional incentives, making them prime targets. The common thread: immediate financial gain tied to minimal identity verification thresholds.

• iGaming: Abusers create new accounts to repeatedly claim bonuses and disappear after cashing out.
• eCommerce: Users exploit discounts or cashback offers using fake or throwaway emails to create temporary accounts.
• Digital banking & fintech: Fraudsters sign up using synthetic identities to claim referral and account-opening bonuses, often escalating into further financial fraud.

Why Is Bonus Abuse a Problem?

Bonuses are designed to attract and retain customers — but they can become a costly liability. Every fraudulently claimed bonus represents marketing dollars lost, skewed acquisition metrics and inflated ROI figures.

Beyond budget waste, bonus abuse invites bad actors onto your platform. These users increase chargebacks, generate false leads and compromise system integrity. Multi-accounting often involves stolen IDs, raising compliance red flags and exposure to regulatory risk. Additionally, filtering out genuine users from abusers increases the manual review load — diverting teams from strategic fraud detection to reactive clean-up.

How To Stop Bonus Abuse

Stopping bonus abuse starts with identifying red flags and building a robust, layered defense system.

• Stronger verification processes: Implementing stricter ID checks and verification processes can help ensure that individuals are not exploiting loopholes in bonus systems.
• Transaction monitoring: Detect repeat users — even if they attempt to mask their digital identity  —by tracking behavioral and technical patterns. Monitor for anomalies in real time to flag potential abuse before it escalates.
• Limitations on bonuses: Setting clear limits on how many bonuses a person can claim in a given period helps to prevent repeated abuse.
• Clear terms and conditions: Publish transparent, easy-to-understand rules outlining eligibility requirements and consequences for abuse. This ensures users understand the boundaries and discourages attempts to bypass the system.
• Enforce penalties: Implement consistent, proportionate consequences for those who violate bonus policies —such as revoking bonuses, suspending accounts or banning users entirely. Enforcement not only deters bad actors but also signals to genuine users that the platform maintains integrity and fairness.
  

How SEON Helps Stop Bonus Abuse

Fighting bonus abuse requires more than manual monitoring — it calls for intelligent, automated tools that can keep pace with evolving fraud tactics.

• Prevent multi-accounting and bonus fraud: With advanced device fingerprinting and velocity checks, SEON detects repeated abuse patterns and prevents users from gaming the system through multiple accounts.
• Spot fraud rings and suspicious behaviors: SEON’s behavior analysis detects unusual deposits, withdrawals, and user actions across accounts. This allows for rapid isolation of high-risk profiles.
• Drive efficiency through automation: SEON reduces manual queries by 40% and accelerates reviews by 20%, thanks to its machine learning engine. Fraud analysts gain actionable insights faster, reducing the burden of manual intervention and enhancing overall risk operations.
• Real results, real protection: Businesses using SEON report preventing up to 80% of bonus abuse cases, enabling them to preserve their marketing budgets and grow safely.

The Bottom Line

Bonuses are meant to spark growth, not fund fraud. Yet without the right protections, bonus programs can easily become targets for abuse that drains budgets, distorts performance metrics and invites risk across your organization. What starts as a seemingly minor loophole can scale into systemic loss, driven by repeat offenders and fraud rings who know exactly how to exploit gaps in your defenses.

The solution isn’t to stop offering bonuses — it’s to stop offering them blindly. With SEON, you gain the tools to proactively filter out bad actors before they ever hit your systems. From digital footprint checks to device intelligence and behavioral analytics, SEON gives you the precision, speed and scale to fight bonus abuse where it starts and protects your growth engine from becoming a liability.