Barclays releases mobile app featuring ability to block gambling transactions

December 14, 2018 2:00 AM
  • CDC Gaming Reports
December 14, 2018 2:00 AM
  • CDC Gaming Reports

Barclays Bank have become the first major high street bank in the UK to offer a new form of mobile banking. The latest version of the bank’s mobile app offers customers the option to block a number of different types of transactions on their current accounts, including gambling and betting shop.

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The app was released on Tuesday of this week and will enable users to block payments to gambling firms, as well as those to pubs, bars and restaurants, premium rate website and phone lines, petrol and diesel payments, and even supermarkets. There are plans at Barclays to offer similar blocking features on credit and debit cards in the near future.

This innovation of Barclays is reportedly based in part on research conducted by the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute, which found that there is a worrying degree of interplay between mental health disorders and addictive tendencies which can lead to compulsive spending or overspending. Both of these are known issues for certain problem gamblers.

When major institutions start to take note of problem gambling issues and offer technical solutions to assist in people controlling and limiting their own behaviour, it’s a clear sign that problem gambling is on the minds of the nation. The government and media have been clear on the need to tackle problem gambling for some time, and media firms are also taking steps to limit exposure to gambling ads, as seen with Sky’s recent announcement that they will limit gambling ads to one per commercial break.

We are seeing an increasing number of moves from institutions outside of the gambling world to help provide means of self-control and self-exclusion – and movement within the industry, as well – to tackle perceived issues of saturation in gambling advertising and public dissatisfaction with it. The recent leaders’ meeting moderated by the RGA indicates as much.

Jeremy Wright, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, made a statement to the press supporting the initiative, in which he called for other banks to “follow suit.” I believe this is something that we are highly likely to see in the years ahead. This trend accompanies government and charitable efforts to help provide better self-exclusion options for the general public – a way of helping them help themselves.

One potential issue with the app is that it will be likely be hard to put in place a “cooling off period,” in which a customer cannot instantly reactivate access to a particular transaction type, something which is likely to limit the effectiveness of this feature as a deterrent to anyone with any serious degree of gambling problem. Nonetheless, it is an initiative which the gambling industry should welcome, as it should provide free help to them in accomplishing the important goal of limiting, if not eliminating, problem gambling.