Belgium’s National Lottery has introduced some changes to its lottery and gambling rules during this coronavirus crisis.

According to the new rules, the validity of winnings tickets will be 30 weeks instead of the existing 20 weeks. This change is in view of the possibility that a winner is unable to go outside or is even hospitalised.

Winners of sums of €100,000 can now contact the headquarters of the National Lottery in Rue Belliard in the European quarter and the company will send a representative to collect the ticket. Earlier, the winners had to present the ticket at the headquarters by themselves.

The new rules allow a player to play for the next ten draws all at once, which is a move intended to encourage players to stay inside as much as possible.

The company has decided to pay out a commission for each ticket that is sold to the owners of paper shops and other vendors. Previously commission was paid only when a vendor sells tickets for €100 or more in a week.

The Lottery will also distribute new posters explaining the rules on safety inside shops, and give a gift of €50 to pay for hand gel or gloves.

“We want to do everything we can to ensure that players are not obliged to go into a newspaper shop to collect their winnings in these times of a health crisis,” Joke Vermoere, a spokesperson of the Lottery, said.

Denmark’s new marketing regulations for gambling are set to come in effect on April 1. As per the new regulations, gambling marketing must include new information and links.

Gambling marketing must now show the age limit for betting and information about the national self-exclusion register. Operators must also direct customers towards the responsible gambling guide by regulator Spillemyndigheden.

“These rules are expected to raise some questions from licence-holders and other stakeholders. Depending on the type of media, it may be difficult to comply with the requirements of the executive orders. Spillemyndigheden will soon be publishing a guide where examples of requirements for different media types will be reviewed,” the regulator said.

IDnow, a leading provider of Identity Verification-as-a-Service solutions with over 250 customers in Europe, has received official certification from TÜV IT for the operation of identification solutions via teleworking. This marks an important milestone for the industry to be able to operate and expand the necessary customer identification for banking and business processes even under exceptional circumstances.

The independent testing institute TÜV IT has certified the IDnow security concept for the operation of video identification and Qualified Electronic Signatures (QES) via remote working. The certification proves that the security measures carried out by IDnow in remote working achieve an equivalent security level as in the certified high-security IDnow Ident Centers. In consideration of the Corona (COVID-19) pandemic, this certification is now of particular importance, as it allows IDnow’s identification solutions for high-security processes to be used unchanged and further expanded even under the current circumstances.

“It is very important to us to be able to provide our customers with a reliable service at all times – especially in the current situation. With our certified concept, we are equipped to continue to offer our employees a safe working environment and to provide our service in a fail-safe manner. We can activate these measures at any time”, says Andreas Bodczek, CEO of IDnow. “Right now, we see an increased demand for remote identification as well as an increase in online credit transactions. We are proud that with our products we can make a contribution to ensuring smooth business and banking processes even in times of social distancing and that we can meet this demand of society”, he adds.

In addition to this remote working concept, IDnow is particularly fail-safe in comparison to the rest of the industry, with a diversification to eleven geographically distributed ID centre locations. The sites are located in various cities across Germany and Europe. A software specially developed for this purpose distributes incoming identification requests simultaneously to all ID centres. In this way, a disruption of one identification centre location can be compensated by other locations without delay.

“Over the past few years, we have invested heavily in the resilience and security of our technology and infrastructure. This is now paying off especially well for our customers. In the last few days we have received a significantly increased number of enquiries from major customers interested in our service as a highly secure identification solution”, says Armin Bauer, co-founder and CTO of IDnow.