ClearStake Secures £1.5 Million in Funding From Senior iGaming Execs

Player verification platform ClearStake has secured £1.5 million in new funding, with the new list of investors including a number of senior figures within the iGaming industry.

The funding will primarily be used to accelerate the growth of ClearStake’s ID by Bank product, which gives operators the opportunity to verify players directly through the user’s banking apps.

Who is ClearStake?

ClearStake was founded in 2020, and aims to speed up the process of requesting and analysing financial data. This can essentially cut the time it could take for operators to make decisions regarding the verification of players. This technology can also potentially reduce the number of new players that operators lose when asking them for their financial information.

Who is on board?

In its latest funding round, ClearStake has been backed by several names who are either currently in senior iGaming roles or who have been involved in the industry previously.

The new investors in ClearStake include:

• Michael Brady (Chairman of Bede Gaming)
• Simon Collins (who has held several gaming industry roles including MD Gaming at News UK and Co-Founder at Gaming Realms)
• Savvas Fellas (Founder and CEO of MrQ.com)
• Will Armitage and Philipp Strizke (Co-Founders of BestOdds.com)
• Max Wright (Founder of White Hat Gaming)
• Ben Clemes (formerly of GiG and HappyHour.io)
• David Flynn (Non-Executive Director and former CEO of Glitnor Group)
• Paddy Power (the son of Paddy Power founder David Power and who shares his name with the Flutter Entertainment-owned brand)
• Sam Swanell (MD and Group CEO of PointsBet)

Martin Burt, Founder and CEO of ClearStake, said: “This raise is a strong signal that our mission matters more than ever. The support from some of the most experienced leaders in iGaming validates our approach: making all verification seamless, compliant and player-friendly.

“With products like ID by Bank and our affordability and source-of-funds solutions, we’re proving that exceptional customer experience around verification and compliance can actually drive growth, not kill it.”

Previous investment

ClearStake previously closed a seven-figure funding round in February 2024, which helped ClearStake secure new partners including Tombola, MrQ and Ivy Casino.

The new investors will join a list of shareholders which includes High Roller Technologies CEO Seth Young, former Sportsbet CEO Cormac Barry, former EML Payments CEO Tom Cregan, former Paddy Power Global Brand Director Adam Perrin, and Oliver Slipper, Co-Founder and former CEO of Stats Perform.

An important time for player insights

Player insight tools are particularly important at this time, especially in a market like the UK. Player data and affordability was one of the key issues touched upon in the 2023 Gambling White Paper, which was produced after the government’s review into the 2005 Gambling Act. The White Paper proposed new obligations for operators to conduct financial checks on customers who could potentially be at risk of harm due to unaffordable and unsustainable gambling losses.

The financial vulnerability checks can be triggered when a player spends £150 in a month. The initial threshold was set at £500 in a month when the system was first trialled in August 2024, and was reduced when the system was fully implemented in February this year.

When the threshold is cleared, the operator can conduct a soft check on publicly-available data, and this can extend to customer due diligence when a player exhibits potentially dangerous gambling patterns, and enhanced checks for higher-spending players.