SAFR face biometrics deployed to support gambling safety program in South Australia

A hotel group RealNetworks says is among the largest in South Australia is deploying SAFR face biometrics across seven hotels in order to identify patrons banned from gaming areas, under a new partnership.

RealNetworks and partner Ecash installed 18 cameras in the hotels.

The South Australia Government has self-exclusion and third-party barring options to recurrent prevent problem gambling, but venues have struggled to implement them due to the inefficiency and difficulty of manually identifying barred individuals. SAFR was approved to automate the detection step with facial recognition by the state government.

The biometric software has an accuracy rate above 99.8 percent for all races, according to the company, and the hotel group operations manager says it has delivered alerts in under 60 seconds with minimal impact on day-to-day operations.

SAFR facial recognition is integrated with the database held by the state’s Consumer and Business Services agency for biometric matching, and if a barred person is detected entering the gaming area, the SAFR action module is used to send SMS or email notifications to hotel staff. SAFR has also been customized to generate daily statistical reports on detections from each venue to the government.

The SAFR health check application is also used to perform system checks and detect performance issues or failures, and taking autonomous action to address detected problems.

SAFR biometrics have been contributing a growing share of RealNetworks’ revenues, according to a recent earnings report.

Article Topics

Australia  |  biometric identification  |  biometrics  |  casinos  |  facial features  |  gambling  |  gaming  |  identity verification  |  RealNetworks  |  SAFR  |  video surveillance