Mamba fosters the right connections with Telesign

About Mamba

Mamba is one of the largest dating sites in the world, with over 50,000 daily
users, and operating in 50 countries across the Commonwealth of Independent
States (CIS) region. As the most popular dating platform in Russia, Mamba is
dedicated to creating an experience their users love.

The challenge

Online dating has revolutionized how people meet and connect, with dating
apps now serving as a prominent way many relationships and marriages today
are formed. Worldwide, there are over 360 million dating app users, and this
number continues to grow rapidly. With more than 60 million profiles, 1 million
new monthly installs, and 25,000 new profiles created daily, Mamba is among
the platforms experiencing this surge in popularity. However, the downside of
such rapid growth is that it attracts fraudsters, bots, and scammers seeking to
take advantage of Mamba and its customers.

Identifying red flags

Just like relationships, dating apps are built on trust. Any violation of this
trust—through spam, identity theft, fake accounts, or catfishing—seriously
harms the platform’s integrity. Every day we hear of new cases where people
have fallen victim to romance scams, such as catfishing, or had their identity
stolen to create fake profiles. More than ever, online dating platforms face
the challenge of creating a safe online environment that enables authentic
matches. With tens of thousands of daily profiles created every day, Mamba
needed a way to spot those red flags before they became a problem for their
customers.

Protecting end-users throughout the process

Fake account registration, spam, promotion abuse, inflated SMS costs, and
identity proofing were all challenges Mamba faced. They needed a robust
verification system to include in their security stack to keep fraudsters away
while protecting their bottom-line. Mamba also aimed to increase security by
adding multi-factor authentication (MFA) to prevent account takeovers, secure
account changes, and password resets. And to flag fraudulent users at sign-up,
Mamba needed real-time fake user detection.

The Solution

Choosing the right way to verify is critical to a platform’s success. A global brand
like Mamba needed an effective and automated fraud prevention solution that
made it easy to identify and protect their legitimate customers worldwide with
a single integration.

Mamba plugged into two of Telesign’s APIs: SMS Verify and Intelligence. With
Intelligence, Mamba was able to layer in a fraud risk scoring mechanism to
help identify fake users, detect bot attacks, and block fraudulent messages.
For Mamba, trust starts with the phone number. By collecting a user’s phone
number at sign-up, Mamba relies on Telesign’s advanced machine learning to
help make real-time, risk-based decisions without adding user friction. Telesign
Intelligence draws on insights from over 4 billion unique phone numbers
and 15+ years of data science. Within milliseconds, Intelligence delivers a risk
assessment score that helps Mamba determine whether to block, flag, or allow
new user registrations.

Results

Using Telesign’s SMS Verification and Intelligence, Mamba was able to deploy
smarter, more secure onboarding and account integrity workflows. Telesign’s
solutions helped Mamba simplify its onboarding process, resulting in increased
conversion rates and a 50% reduction in verification costs. Telesign has helped
Mamba increase its global reach, reduce promo abuse, minimize bot attacks
and fake account registration, and provide high message delivery rates—
allowing Mamba to save on operational costs, keep their end-users safe, and
facilitate continued growth and brand trust.