Online gambling is a popular pastime for many people in the UK—and around the world. However, for a certain percentage of gamblers, the allure of quick money and exciting games can be too much.
Because of this, talking about gambling without mentioning gambling problems and gambling addiction has become increasingly difficult.
Being that problem gamblers are most often consenting adults, helping them control their gambling is not always easy or straightforward.
In this article, we take a look at some of the new ways with which this could be done, as reported by GamCare.
GamCare’s Gambling-Related Financial Harm Project Bears Fruit
In 2019, the British gambling support charity GamCare established a workshop project to help gather information on how to best tackle gambling-related harms. Recently, a session of this workshop gathered 70 representatives under one roof to discuss what could potentially be done. The representatives in the workshop included people from multiple different industries, including the debt advice sector, gambling support services, and financial services.
According to an article posted on GamCare’s website on 7th November 2024, companies such as Santander had come up with interesting new methods designed to combat problem gambling. Some of these methods included allowing customers to better monitor the level of how much money they were spending on gambling as well as sending them pop-up notifications about available support tools.
Nowadays, many online banking systems allow their customers to monitor their monthly spending and see where their money has gone. As it turns out, Santander has already taken measures to take this a step further in order to protect and advise its customers. In addition, the representative from Santander had also mentioned that they were monitoring how much money players were spending on gambling in the span of 24 hours to provide them with links to appropriate support services.
GamCare recommends steps Banks can take
At the end of its gambling workshop, GamCare gave some of its own recommendations on how banks can better support those struggling with their gambling.
Some of these things included analyzing the following:
- The amount of gambling spending compared to income
- Late-night gambling transactions
- Increased gambling activity around payday
In addition to this, GamCare also called for more banks to proactively help their customers by referring them to services like the NGH (National Gambling Helpline) as well as self-exclusion schemes and blocking software such as GAMSTOP and GAMBAN.
According to GamCare’s Financial Harm Manager Raminta Diliso, 72% of people who contacted the National Gambling Helpline in 2023 disclosed suffering from financial difficulties. As a result, GamCare feels that more could be done by banks to prevent issues such as this from getting worse.
Other regulated Markets are also working with Payment Providers
Naturally, the UK is not the only market for gambling that is dealing with harm related to gambling problems. In countries like Finland, gambling addiction is also a huge issue. While many Finns are using online casinos to gamble responsibly, not everyone is able to do so. One of the contributors to these issues in the past few years has been the increase in so-called pay-n-play casinos, which make gambling even more simple and straightforward than it used to be.
Pay-and-play casinos allow Finns to register a gambling account by simply using their bank accounts. The website zimplerkasinot.net lists several online casinos, which can be accessed in mere seconds without the need to create new usernames or passwords. On the positive side, casinos working this closely with online banking systems could potentially monitor their customers’ gambling habits better than most others.
For now, foreign online casinos are not entirely accepted in Finland. However, this is all bound to change in 2026 or 2027 when outside gambling companies will officially be allowed into the Finnish market. It would make a lot of sense, then, for Finland to also start monitoring their citizens’ gambling habits to ensure a safer environment for all.
Conclusion
As online casino gaming has become a lot more prevalent over the years, the need for controls for safer gambling has also risen dramatically. With new technology as well as the advent of more powerful AI, there is a good chance that problem gambling will also become more easily diagnosed and treated in the future.
