Pondering the plastic

In this month’s Licensing Expert article for SBC News (entitled “Pondering the plastic”), David Clifton delves deeper into the Gambling Commission’s recent announcement that it will be holding a twelve-week consultation (commencing in mid-August 2019) on the issue of gambling online with credit cards.

In the article (that can be downloaded below), David suggests that, whilst opponents to such a ban should focus their attention on the Commission’s express invitation for evidence about consumers’ motivations for using credit cards to gamble and any specific benefits of using them, addressing that issue alone is unlikely to be enough to avoid imposition of a ban.

He suggests that additional strong arguments will need to be deployed and, in his article, poses a number of questions that he believes are worth exploring in order to mount such arguments, concluding that “it’s clearly time for opponents of a credit card ban to put on their serious thinking caps”. 

UPDATE: On 14 August 2019, as reported by us here, the Gambling Commission launched its consultation (ending on 6 November 2019) on gambling with credit cards, applicable to both remote and non-remote gambling. It seems clear to us that the status quo will not be maintained in future because the Commission is consulting specifically on just two separate options, i.e. either:

Option A – prohibiting the use of credit cards for all forms of remote gambling (ie for remote betting, casino, bingo and lotteries) and for non-remote betting, or

Option B – introducing controls and limits on the use of credit cards, to be applied to all forms of remote gambling and non-remote betting, instead of a prohibition.

 

Download article PDF: SBC News – Pondering the Plastic