Text. Verify. Play: Securing Signups at Chumba Casino
Scaling secure access with real-world identity checks — featuring Twilio integration, KYC readiness, and fraud prevention mechanisms for Chumba Casino.
🧨 Background & Challenges
Chumba Casino faced increasing challenges around account fraud, duplicate signups, and inconsistent verification across multiple login pathways like Facebook OAuth and email/password. To comply with evolving KYC regulations and reduce friction for legitimate users, we set out to build a secure, scalable phone verification system powered by Twilio.
🎯 Project Goals
Prevent Duplicates
Blocked repeated account creation to maintain fair promotional use.
Reduce Fraud
Minimized abusive behaviors and improved platform integrity.
Capture Mobile Numbers
Enabled future marketing engagement through SMS campaigns.
Strengthen Trust
Increased identity confidence across login types.
KYC Compliance
Enhanced verification standards to support regulatory requirements.
Block Bots
Prevent automated signups and scripted abuse with real-world identity checks.
⚙️ How It Works
A step-by-step walkthrough of how users verify their identity using a secure SMS-based flow.
Enter Phone Number
User provides their mobile number during signup.
OTP Sent
Twilio delivers the one-time password via SMS.
Submit Code
User enters the code and Twilio validates it.
Verified
Results are logged for compliance and future use.
🧩 Architecture Diagram
Visual overview of service orchestration and API flows.
🔧 Integration Challenges
The integration of phone verification into Chumba Casino's existing authentication system posed significant complexity due to multiple existing login flows — including Facebook OAuth and standard email verification. A complete overhaul of the existing verification logic was required to avoid conflicts between phone and email verification states.
📞 Phone Verify Service Integration
The Challenge
The product lacked a phone verification solution and proof of concept. Implementation was blocked by unclear ownership and no agreed-upon service provider.
The Fix
Took ownership of the verification flow, proposed and implemented Twilio SMS as the provider, and documented the approach to unblock engineering and improve team clarity.
🪢 UI/Logic Coupling
The Challenge
The existing verification logic was tightly coupled with login flow UI, making it challenging to integrate and maintain additional verification logic.
The Fix
Uncoupled verification logic from UI components by centralizing all user verification checks into a single utility function to handle mixed verification states across login flows, as well as canary rollout/feature flag states for controlled exposure of changes.
🕸️ Branch Complexity
The Challenge
Feature flags, multiple login flows, canary release logic and feature flagging introduced a large amount of branching, making the system brittle and hard to maintain.
The Fix
Reduced branching complexity by introducing dedicated utility functions for feature flag evaluation and login state handling, improving code clarity and maintainability across environments.
🧬 Database Mutation
The Challenge
Email verification logic prematurely set database flags indicating the user was fully verified, leading to inconsistent authentication states and security edge cases.
The Fix
Extracted verification logic into a centralized utility function and deprecated unreliable flags, ensuring that user verification status accurately reflects completed steps across all flows.
🚀 Outcomes
Stronger Identity Assurance
Enabled phone verification to support KYC compliance and secure key user data.
Fraud Rate Reduction
Noticed a significant drop in duplicate and bot signups post-deployment.
Increased Verification Coverage
Achieved high opt-in rates for phone number collection across login types.
Seamless Multi-Flow Handling
Authentication logic now smoothly supports Facebook, Email, and Phone logins without edge case regressions.
Robust Test Coverage
Test suite ensures safe iteration across authentication pathways with near-zero regressions.
Resilient SMS Delivery
Integrated fallback and retry logic to improve Twilio delivery success rates.