On Thursday, the European Gaming and Betting Association (EGBA) issued an announcement to the effect that they have requested the Norwegian Data Inspectorate (NDI) to investigate how the Norwegian Gaming Authority (NGA) has been handling player deposits in the country. They claim that the NGA is violating privacy rights of those individuals, and of many others who have not even done any gambling, due to their methods of data collection on this issue.
Back in May 2017 the NGA gave out instructions to national banks to stop processing transactions with seven payment processors believed to be facilitating unauthorised gambling. These include five international operators: Worldpay, Earth Port, Trustly, Inpay and Entercash.
Most of Norway’s authorised gambling is part of a state-owned system, Norsk Tipping and Norsk Rikstoto are the entities in question. Thus far the nation has opted to keep gambling a homegrown affair, which allows them to direct profits to worthy causes in the national interest.
Specifically, the EGBA believe that data accessed by the NGA in its investigations was drawn from the Foreign Exchange Register, a resource they claim the NGA has no legal right to access according to national laws. They claim it contravenes citizens’ privacy rights as specified in the European Convention of Human Rights.
Ultimately, this battle goes back to 2010’s Norwegian Payment Blocking Regulation, only enforced last year with the order to the banks. This blocks any payment processing for gambling not licensed within the country.
One of the EGBA’s most compelling arguments is that the gambling industry is held to high standards in Norway with regard to customer due diligence and privacy. Surely the government themselves must be held to similar standards. It’s hard to argue with that.
