The UK gambling credit card ban
Have you noticed that you can no longer use your credit card to gamble at casinos in the United Kingdom? Here, we want to talk a little bit about this ban. We are going to give a general overview here. If you want to find out more info about this ban, then click that link. For now, we will give you the absolute basics of this ban so you can understand it a little bit more.
Why were credit cards banned?
The United Kingdom is one of the ‘online gambling hotspots’ of the world. Gambling is pretty much a pastime there, and many of the top casinos will have an operation in the United Kingdom due to the amount of money that can be made there.
Now, the UK Gambling Commission is quite lax compared to other gambling commissions around the world. This is because they know just how important the gambling industry is to the country. However, at the end of the day, the whole reason they exist is to help protect the customer.
In recent years, the UK Gambling Commission has started to crack down hard on ‘problem gambling’. They want to help ensure that gambling addicts are not clawing themselves deeper into debt. The UK Gambling Commission has a number of processes in place here e.g. encouraging online casinos to keep an eye out for problem gamblers, and even having a list of known problem gamblers to ensure that they cannot sign-up to any online casino in the United Kingdom. However, they wanted to do more.
A lot of effort has been put into ensuring that gamblers cannot gamble with money that they do not have. This meant a ban on credit cards. By banning credit cards, it would take away one method of a person gambling themselves into debt. After all, a credit card payment is essentially a loan that needs to be paid back at some point. By allowing people to gamble using debit cards only, it guaranteed that any money that was being spent was money actually sitting in the customer’s account.
It was just a ban on credit cards but on all lines of credit
A lot of people refer to this ban as a ‘credit card ban’. However, it bans all types of credit. This means the ability to use PayPal Credit at an online casino, or other similar payment schemes. Basically, if the money is obtained through a credit line, it will fall foul of this ‘ban’.
Will this impact the gambling industry?
We do not know yet.
This ‘ban’ is incredibly new and thus we have not seen the full effects. It is likely that online casinos and betting sites will lose a small amount of money, but we believe that most people will eventually veer away from credit cards and start to use other funding methods e.g. direct debit, or using their credit card. The only people that will really be impacted by this ban would be those that are gambling using a line of credit, and it may actually be a positive for those people. After all, they will have less of a chance of forcing themselves into debt due to their gambling.
Conclusion
If you gamble in the United Kingdom, you will no longer be able to use a credit card or any other line of credit to make payments. This means gambling at any casino licensed by the UKGC will require you to use another funding source.
