United Kingdom Gambling Commission Considers Banning Credit Cards for Payment

United Kingdom Gambling Commission Considers Banning Credit Cards for Payment ( Click to Enlarge )

It’s been announced that the United Kingdom Gambling Commission has started a 12-week study and investigation into whether or not they should ban the use of credit cards for deposits. This has huge implications because credit cards are one of the most popular ways to fund accounts for online casinos and other types of gambling online.

Potential Credit Card Ban Coming From the UKGC

There are a lot of different types of payment options for online gambling, and not all of them are used with the same frequency. One of the most accessible and most popular options for sending deposits and receiving withdrawals is a credit card, but that could come to an end in the coming months in the United Kingdom:

The Gambling Commission has started a study to determine if credit card payments should be banned from use with online gambling.

This news is surprising to a lot of industry experts and players alike, and the implications could be far-reaching to say the least. The reasons for this investigation and the potential consequences are very interesting, however.

Why Ban Credit Cards?

The basic idea behind banning credit cards would be to prevent situations of people essentially borrowing money to gamble. While that might sound dramatic, that’s essentially what’s happening when someone is allowed to use a credit card to make a deposit at an online casino or other type of online gambling destination.

The issue here is that the United Kingdom Gambling Commission is very concerned with curbing as much problem gambling behavior as they can and offering services and help for people who suffer from gambling addiction. Along these lines, making it fairly easy for them to gamble on credit goes completely against what they’re all about in this particular area, so it’s easy to see why it’s an issue.

With that having been said, there’s potentially a lot of pushback on this issue. One of the main reasons is that, like we’ve mentioned above, credit cards are one of the most popular ways to make deposits and receive withdrawals in the entire industry.

If you take that away, not only will it be inconvenient for players, but it will also likely decrease business for online gambling sites since some percentage of the regular population will play less often as a result.

The investigation is set to take 12 weeks before they come out with any further news about the situation, and a lot of people are waiting eagerly to see what they will have to say as a result of the study.

The Respect Given to the UKGC

If you aren’t aware, the United Kingdom Gambling Commission is one of the most well-respected licensing bodies for online gambling in the world, and many consider it to be the gold standard that all other regulatory bodies are judged by.

They’ve gotten this level of respect and admiration because of how serious they are about taking care of problem gamblers and how serious they are about taking care of all players when it comes to things like holding operators and software companies accountable. This leads to a particularly safe and secure environment, which is exactly what the industry needs.

Because of this, it’s easy to see that the credit card investigation situation, as ridiculous as it might sound on the surface, is actually coming from the right place in terms of the intentions and results that we might expect.

Where to Go From Here?

At this point, we’ll really just have to wait and see what happens. If the UKGC does decide to put some kind of ban on credit card payments, their track record suggests that it won’t be an outright ban and that there will simply be restrictions put in place to prevent problem gamblers from being taken advantage of.

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