Why should the casino cough up for YOU to prove YOUR identity?
In your world, do you want them to pay for your drivers licence and passport as well?
99% of players have little or no trouble proving who they are...and most of the other 1% are scammers. If you don't have the required documents, or aren't prepared to pay for them like everyone else, then don't play online.
It's not a case necessarily of the player not having the documents, it is the casino wanting a non-standard means of verifying them. The casino SHOULD cover the costs, but not up front. The player should be paid expenses ONLY if the casino got it wrong in it's initial refusal of the documents.
Many casinos do this anyway, as once they have verified the player, they want to keep them. It is the payment of costs up front that benefits the scammers, after all, they could simply accept the costs and then walk away knowing full well that they could not pass verification.
Whilst we may be asked to show our ID in "real life", we are NOT required to cover the costs involved in the business sending a copy to head office, asking a higher manager to "pop downstairs" to offer a second opinion, etc. ALL we are required to do is present the documents that we have, and as specified in the terms of service, this is done once the player scans them and emails them into the casino. ONLY scammers should be expected to pay the costs involved in dealing with their deception, innocent players mistakenly caught in the net should be compensated for the inconvenience.
Casinos seem to think they are banks, and most normal retail businesses do NOT go around asking for "notarised copies" of anything. The most inconvenience you will get is being asked to show ID before getting into an age restricted venue, or buy age restricted goods and services. Casinos are nothing more than an age restricted entertainment service, so must ensure that the player is old enough. They also have to know that the player is risking their own money, but this can be done through a proof of access to the originating account, and that it ties in to their declared details. Crediting (or deducting) a mystery micropayment which the player then has to supply details of demonstrates a current access to the underlying account, rather than merely access to stolen card/bank details. This is MORE secure than having a statement notarised by whoever the player chooses, as this still leaves the casino having to verify the notary in order to verify that the notarisation is legitimate.
Another oddity brought up is that the player is asked to send this document NOT to the casino, but to a contractor it uses to verify players' details and documents. This contractor in this case is NOT even in the same COUNTRY as the casino operates from in terms of it's gaming license, and this can make players feel there is "something dodgy going on" with said casino.
NO casino has EVER explained what is going on here, leaving players to speculate, and some to worry.
Sensitive information being forwarded to subcontractors has been a HUGE problem for many customers, as many data leaks have been traced to weaknesses in this chain of outsourcing, rather than the customer or business involved. So called "call centres" have been the biggest source of leaks, so much so that many companies have given up on the idea and brought these operations back "in house".
No player can know just how many copies of their information exist, and in which countries.
In this case, it seems that THREE different countries are all involved in storing and processing player information.
1) The licensing jurisdiction
2) Casino customer support centre (although this can be in the same country as the licensing jurisdiction, but this is rare given that many are merely jurisdictions of convenience, with little infrastructure or physical resources to house the main support centres).
3) Subcontractors, in this case player verification has been contracted out to a company, rather than being done "in house" by the casino management.
The way players are requested to send the documents DIRECT to the subcontractor is what stands out in this case. Many other operators would rather such arrangements stay low key, and tend to ask players to send their documents to the casino support centre, who then forward them to whatever contractors are being used to carry out the verification. I recall many Microgaming casinos contracted this out to Proccyber, but this was barely apparent to players as they were discouraged from interacting directly with Proccyber, but were asked to do everything via the casinos' own CS.
It was actually possible to log into Proccyber with your casino and card details and see your card transactions there, along with some additional descriptors that didn't make it to your statements in either the card account, or casino Cashcheck. I did this a few times, logging into Proccyber and viewing a little more detail about which casino transactions went to, something that isn't shown on the card statement where only the name of the processor is shown. It seemed that many of these processor names showing on my card statement went via Proccyber with casino deposits. I did this a few times when my card statements appeared to be wrong. Checking more thoroughly showed that there were almost no actual errors, but that confusion had resulted from transactions taking quite some time to be posted, thus making them show up in the wrong order on my card statement, and with no way of knowing which item belonged to which casino.