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Exclusive Q and A with Tamas Kadar, Founder and CEO of SEON

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“The sun literally never sets on SEON”, proudly declares Tamas Kadar while talking about the rapid growth of his company over the last few years.

There is more in this interview than such eye-catching slogans. He talks here about SEON’s origin, what exactly they do and how they do it. He concludes with insightful comments on fraud detection in the gambling industry and new developments.

Jump straight to the interview more such gems of quotes after the following appetizer about the tech start-up space:

“We have also been a profitable company since 2019, which is rarer than you’d think in the tech start-up space, where so many companies rely on rounds of investment rather than solid business fundamentals.”

Q. Let us start from the origin of SEON. Like Google, Facebook and many others, SEON too was founded at a university. While there is a brief intro about it on your website, could you narrate what exactly led to the founding of SEON?

A. Bence Jendruszák and I met at Corvinus University in Budapest and we instantly found that we had a shared interest in cryptocurrency. We saw that there was a gap in the market for a crypto exchange that served Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). When it went live, we were immediately bombarded by fraud attempts, but when we looked at what was currently on the market from legacy anti-fraud companies we found that nothing was really as good as what we knew was possible.

We created our own homebrew anti-fraud solution, and it was so good that other companies asked to use it. We saw that we had a business idea that had far more potential than the crypto exchange, re-focused our efforts, and now four years later here we are.

Q. Talk to us about the growth of the company over the years? Could you provide some statistics?

A. The most important stat is always going to be customer growth: we now have over 5,000 clients ranging from SMEs and start-ups to major international companies. We have also been a profitable company since 2019, which is rarer than you’d think in the tech start-up space, where so many companies rely on rounds of investment rather than solid business fundamentals. Most recently, we hired our hundredth employee, and we’re still growing.

Q. What are the recent developments and expansions? How did the company perform in a pandemic-induced world?

A. We’ve opened offices in four countries now: Budapest, London, the US and Indonesia – the sun literally never sets on SEON.

We also broke a record for the largest ever investment in a Hungarian company when we were funded by Creandum, who were also early investors in Spotify, Klarna and Depop. Their investment and mentorship are already allowing us to create new products and bring them to a much greater audience.

What’s more, we adapted well during the pandemic because we have always worked across multiple offices – changing to home working wasn’t a major challenge to us. The only difficulty was dealing with the sheer quantity of fraud during the past 18 months, but we have been able to continue to support our clients just as well as we had before the pandemic.

Q. SEON offers two products: Intelligence Tool and Sense Platform. Could you describe how SEON’s solution evolved into its present version?

A. The ideas were there from the start, but the technology behind them has gotten more sophisticated. We continually work on increasing speed to detect fraud even faster whilst reducing as much friction as possible for the end customer. At the same time, we build on depth for accuracy to reduce false positives. The more layering and data points we can check gives customers more certainty in each risk score. We also expand our breadth to cover more social signals and digital data points – an all-seeing eye to identify fraud quickly.

Q. How does SEON reduce friction for customers onboarding new users and accounts?

A. We know that customers want a fast, seamless sign-up process. If signing up for a new gaming site takes too long or requires too much work on the part of the player then they will go elsewhere. However, in gaming, as with other high-stakes industries like banking, there are regulatory demands that increase the ‘friction’ that new players are going to feel before they can start playing. It’s also very easy for anyone, whether they are a professional fraudster or just an unscrupulous player, to use throwaway emails, ‘burner’ phones and easy to obtain fake IDs and synthetic identities.

SEON can run a light and invisible customer profiling system in real time during customer signup that can assign risk scores to each customer – those with high scores will be given extra checks while the majority that are fine will go through with less friction. Since it is running in the background, customers will never know that they are being checked.

Q. What are the major types of fraud that SEON encounters and tackles? What sort of fraud do you think will affect the gaming and gambling industry in particular?

A. There are new forms of fraud emerging every day, so this list is going to be by no means extensive, but in iGaming we tend to see a larger number of low-stakes forms of fraud than in other industries. We find that because many gaming platforms give free bets or credit for new signups there is a lot of multi-accounting, which is fairly easy to find because there’s no incentive to create foolproof synthetic identities for a $10 bonus.

We also see a lot of ‘friendly’ fraud from players as opposed to criminals – players who have been banned creating new identities or unsuccessful players starting chargebacks to get back their losses. It’s a very fast-moving space compared to some of the other industries we work with, which is why it’s ideally suited for an AI-based system that can keep up.

Q. How does SEON ensure that it does not breach the user data protection and privacy regulations and protocols?

A. We always only use publicly available sources such as open data from social networks when we collect information—things like your browser, your screen resolution and hundreds of other device features.

We don’t store this information long-term in all cases – it is deleted after 12 months and not stored in a central database. We are fully compliant with GDPR and the relevant privacy regulations in the areas we operate. More importantly, we are always thinking about the balance between privacy and security in our work.

Q. Could you reveal the expansion plans and product launches in the near future?

A. We have just significantly upgraded our device fingerprinting capabilities based on our research on the kind of setups that fraudsters use to hide their tracks, and this will greatly increase our ability to not just detect fraud but prevent false positives and thereby increase the number of customers.

We also recently rolled out a revenue widget, designed to allow iGaming customers to easily see a snapshot of how much a user has deposited and withdrawn within the past year. Fraudsters usually have high revenue with low deposits as they abuse bonuses and loopholes.

Product updates and improvements are always ongoing as we develop more features that better support our customers and solve real fraud problems that they face.

To learn more about SEON, visit: https://seon.io/

 

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Speaking the Player’s Language: Promatic Group’s Take on Game Localization in CEE

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The Prague Gaming & TECH Summit 2025 brought together some of the brightest minds in the iGaming and tech industries – and the conversation didn’t stop when the curtains closed. As this year’s General Sponsor through its Promatic Games brand, Promatic Group made a powerful impact on-stage and behind the scenes. In a dynamic keynote presentation titled “Localizing Slot Games: Does the Central European Player Need Localized Content?”, Maciej Makuszewski, iGaming Director, and Luka Oblak, Head of Product Design, explored how cultural nuances shape player engagement and game performance across regional markets.

Now, post-event, we caught up with Maciej Makuszewski to delve deeper into the topic of localization, player behavior, and what makes content truly resonate in Central and Eastern Europe.

 

Maciej, your keynote at the Summit offered compelling insights into how culture and language affect game engagement. What do you believe is the biggest misconception about localization in the iGaming industry today?

It is that it is enough to hire a translator of a game to deliver localized content. This is not the end of the road – on the contrary – this is just the beginning. This may sound like saying the sun rises in the east, but I still would say there can be a lot more attention paid to giving games a local touch.

But coming back to translations, nowadays, even at this basic level, we can observe so many pitfalls and mistakes that could have been avoided if people really had the player at the core of their strategy. I guess we are past this time in history of globalization that unified products and content simply entered new markets with no tailoring whatsoever and there was demand for them, because there hadn’t been much of a choice of anything else. We’d like to see companies try harder when they enter new markets. I hope we will become one that actually gets the hyperlocalization just right.

 

You and Luka presented some standout cases on localized content. Could you share one example that truly surprised your team – either by outperforming expectations or revealing a cultural insight you hadn’t anticipated?

I guess that would be the transformation of a simple fruit game launched as Red Hot Jackpot in Poland, into a rich animations theme game it became in Nigeria. The nigerian version of Red Hot Jackpot is called Naija Wheels and it is the exact the same math model and game logic as Red Hot Jackpot, but what makes it appealing to the local customers of slot halls in Nigeria is its hyperlocal theme. Naija Wheels is a funny story of things you see in Lagos traffic. So instead of a Cherry symbol you have a symbol of a police officer. Instead of a plum symbol, you have an okada driver from Lagos etc.

Very different game themes, same logics, same business effects – the game is a great performing slot in Poland and a superb hit in Nigeria.

 

In your view, what are the non-negotiables when designing localized slot content for Central and Eastern European markets? Are there elements developers often overlook?

There are so many local markets in the CEE that it is really hard to unify this. But in a nutshell – we know in our region, highly volatile fruit themed games are very popular. Having said that, it is not a surfire way to success. You may want to localize the content even further through cultural and humor references.

 

The ROI of local-branded slots is often debated. Based on Promatic Group’s experience, when does it make strategic and commercial sense to invest in hyper-local content – and when is it better to focus on broader appeal?

It all depends why you do this and how you measure the ROI. If you measure a single game ROI this might be a trap. It will very much depend on the math model and features of the particular game. Apart from revenue stream, there are also costs to be considered. If we’re talking about a “game reskin” then certification will be something you can optimize and so on. There are numerous ways to tackle this issue. Sometimes you can come up with a hyper local game and just launch it somewhere else to test if it works, which will boost your revenue stream and the total ROI. All in all we are very happy with our local approach and we intend to stick to it.

 

Let’s talk about the future. With shifting player expectations and tech advancements like AI personalization, how do you see the localization strategy evolving over the next 2–3 years at Promatic Group?

I would expect this hyperlocalization becomes a commodity in the industry. This will also require a lot of human factor so that it is done the right way. AI will speed things up, but I believe that the human touch will be key. We already have amazing tools, but using them the right way is what will make a great difference.

The post Speaking the Player’s Language: Promatic Group’s Take on Game Localization in CEE appeared first on European Gaming Industry News.

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Compliance Updates

Navigating Legal Frontiers: Nordic Legal’s Vision for the Finnish Gambling Market

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The Prague Gaming & TECH Summit 2025 brought together top experts across the iGaming and tech landscape, and Nordic Legal stood out as the event’s Scandinavian Legal Expertise Sponsor. A renowned legal advisory firm in the Nordic region, Nordic Legal continues to shape the future of gambling legislation and compliance in Europe.

In this post-event interview, we caught up with Pekka Ilmivalta, Head of the Finnish Office at Nordic Legal, to dive deeper into the firm’s insights on the upcoming Finnish gambling reform, the legal challenges it poses, and the opportunities it presents for operators preparing to enter the market.

 

Finland is preparing to launch its regulated gambling sector in January 2026. As an expert with over 20 years of experience in the gambling industry, how do you view its draft legislation and the current state of the Finnish gambling market? 

Finns are used to gambling online, and the size of the market is close to 2 billion euros in GGR. As the market share of the national monopoly operator, Veikkaus, has declined to around 50 percent, nearly half of the gambling spending already takes place outside the Finnish regulation. Therefore, the gambling legislation reform is really needed.

The Government Proposal now being dealt with in the Finnish Parliament is generally a comprehensive and a good package. As the political parties are quite unanimous about the need for the reform, I expect the parliamentary discussion to concentrate on the balance between responsibility measures and the features making the market interesting enough for the operators to enter the regulated market. Especially marketing, use of affiliates and bonusing will, and should, be discussed.

I believe that the Parliament will approve the new legislation early next autumn and that the B2C license application process will be able to begin already in January next year.

 

The Finnish legislative review council has raised concerns about potential increases in gambling harms under the new regulatory framework. What measures do you believe are necessary to mitigate these risks, and how could Finland balance market liberalization with responsible gambling practices?

Personally, I think that gambling harms must be taken seriously. However, as almost half of the Finnish gambling now happens outside the regulated market, I am convinced that succeeding in channelization is a crucial starting point to really mitigate gambling harms. Therefore, attractiveness of the market and measures against the black market are extremely important. Furthermore, self-exclusion and responsible gambling tools are, of course, needed for the players. Generally, I believe that AI assisted monitoring could and will have an important role in preventing harmful gambling in the future. To really work, responsible gambling tools need to be both pragmatic and relevant for each individual player.

 

Considering Finland’s upcoming gambling reform, what legal and operational challenges should gambling operators be prepared for, particularly regarding compliance and player protection? Which key trends do you see shaping the market’s future?

As it seems now that affiliates and welcome bonuses will be banned, operators will have to find other means to build their brand and acquire customers. Even though traditional marketing and sponsoring are widely acceptable, I would expect to see innovative solutions to stand out from the probable marketing avalanche during the first months after the market opening. Perhaps new kinds of sponsorships or retail activities? Or even enhanced player protection measures to gain a competitive edge?

Overall, I would advise operators to start their market entry preparations early enough. The licensing procedure could take several (6 to 9) months. Also, adjusting to the local technical and player protection requirements might not happen overnight.

 

What insights could help Finland create a balanced and effective gambling market?

I believe that the new legislation will provide a good enough framework for a functional gambling market. However, based on experiences from Sweden and Denmark, I would point out two practical aspects crucial to making the new legislation effective: First, there needs to be collaboration between licensed operators and the new regulator. Dialogue and a mutual will to find solutions should be the common mindset. Secondly, the regulator hopefully has enough resources (tools, persons and persistence) to interfere with the black-market operations, which will evidently still exist also after the reform.

 

Nordic Legal has extensive experience advising European governments on regulatory best practices. How can your firm assist operators looking to enter the Finnish market and navigate the evolving legal landscape?

With our deep knowledge of Finnish legislation, extensive experience from regulatory developments in other jurisdictions, and strong industry relationships, we are well-positioned to support operators and B2B suppliers entering the Finnish market. We can offer comprehensive guidance not only on compliance and licensing, but also on navigating strategic challenges, ensuring our clients are well-prepared for a dynamic and shifting legal landscape. Our proactive approach enables us to identify regulatory changes early and help clients stay ahead of industry developments.

 

The post Navigating Legal Frontiers: Nordic Legal’s Vision for the Finnish Gambling Market appeared first on European Gaming Industry News.

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Exclusive Q&A With Bar Konson, Chief Business Development Officer at NuxGame

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Online casinos are in a race to meet the growing demands of players, but many operators are being left behind. Slow payment systems, high transaction fees, and outdated software are limiting growth and hurting the player experience. But with the right tools, operators can break free from these limitations and create fluid, player-first experiences.

Bar Konson, Chief Business Development Officer at NuxGame, offers solutions that many operators have been waiting for. With NuxGame’s crypto-ready turnkey platform, operators can quickly solve common issues and roll out future-forward digital casinos that appeal to modern players. The crypto market is growing fast, with an expected $5 billion by 2030. Find out in this interview how making the most of crypto can take your casino to the next level and leave competitors behind.

The impact of crypto in iGaming is undeniable. Bar, do you believe Bitcoin is here to stay, or are we just seeing the beginning of a temporary trend?

The truth is, Bitcoin and crypto are here to stay, and it’s not just a “cool new thing” for players. They offer fast transactions, more security, and a level of transparency that players are increasingly looking for. The iGaming scene is modernizing, and those who aren’t adopting crypto solutions are definitely going to fall behind. You don’t want to watch everyone else pass you by.

So how does NuxGame support the crypto trend? What makes your platform stand out in this fast paced environment?

At NuxGame, we’re not simply handing over a crypto solution and calling it a day. We provide a fully integrated crypto casino software solution that supports multiple cryptocurrencies, but more importantly, we’re here for you every step of the way. Our customer service managers understand that each operator has unique priorities, so we work closely with you to make sure that everything works exactly the way you want it. The dashboard shows everything in real-time, while players get quicker transactions and a better overall game. And the best part is that you’re not left alone with the system integration. Our team is always ready to make your operations work exactly how you want.

I know you’ve got a lot of experience with turnkey solutions. What makes NuxGame’s turnkey casino solution a perfect fit for operators looking to add crypto into their business?

The whole idea behind a turnkey casino solution is to give operators everything they need to go live as soon as possible. When you add crypto, that means offering everything from crypto-friendly payment systems to blockchain-backed gaming for transparency and security. But the important part is that it’s not merely about putting a “crypto” label on your website and leaving it at that. We provide full integration with multi-coin support, crypto bonuses, and even real-time analytics. For operators, it’s the peace of mind that comes with knowing that upon making the switch, everything works — and it works fast. No waiting, no stress, just a revenue-boosting crypto experience. And you’ll be seeing profits in no time. Because you’ll get the tools to start engaging players immediately.

Bar, let’s talk about the notable transition from traditional casinos to online. Are operators who come from land-based casinos jumping on the crypto train? How are they adapting?

Absolutely! A lot of traditional operators are taking their first steps into the online scene and realizing crypto’s impact in it all. They already have local brand recognition, and now it’s time to take that trust and build it online. The great thing is, with crypto, they don’t have to worry about those annoying international payment delays or high fees. We help them adapt without the growing pains, offering localization for both payments and content. It’s basically taking what they already know and applying it to the online space: no need to rebuild everything. You’ve got your brand and audience — now let us help you go digital. It’s that easy.

One last thing: with all the changes happening in the iGaming space, especially with the crypto’s growing presence, what do you think operators should be focusing on in 2025?

2025 is all about speed and adaptability. Markets are moving at record pace, and operators who are stuck in the “perfect platform” mentality are going to miss the boat. Players expect fast, secure experiences, and with crypto, that’s what they get. But to keep up, operators need to launch fast, learn fast, and be ready to grow quickly. That means not over-complicating things: you don’t need to build from zero when you’ve got the right tools. With platforms like ours, operators can quickly adapt to trends, integrate new features, and focus on what really matters: delivering a fantastic player experience. The market’s moving, and those who move with it are the ones who win.

The post Exclusive Q&A With Bar Konson, Chief Business Development Officer at NuxGame appeared first on European Gaming Industry News.

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