The Gambling Commission of Great Britain (GCGB) clarified some details of their upcoming ban on credit cards last week.
As expected, the GC stated that this ban also extends to e-wallets like PayPal, Skrill, and Neteller. From April 14th, it won’t be allowed to use these credit cards attached to these services to transfer money to online bookies and casinos.
The GC says that these financial providers have ways to stop such transactions, but that ultimately, it will be down to the operator to ensure clients are not funding their accounts with credit cards.
It’s going to be interesting to see how well this ban works in practice. Hopefully, we don’t see a situation where operators stop accepting e-wallets altogether out of fear of attracting a fine.
With £2/spins on slots, as well as bans on feature buy-ins and VIP accounts also on the horizon for 2020, further limits on payment methods could be the last straw for operators.
If I wanted to devise a way to push online bookies and online casinos offshore, it would look very similar to this.