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Bank transfers, also referred to as wire transfers, are a payment method that involves moving funds directly from your bank account to the casino’s bank account by exchanging your account details.

“Take a Gambling Break and Bank Your Money” Spreads Across America on Wednesday, September 29 #TakeaGamblingBreak

Gambling Operators Are Called On to Turn Off Their Lottery Terminals and Gambling Machines for a Day; Citizens Urged to Save Money in a Bank or Credit Union

WHAT:

1) If you buy state lottery tickets, use electronic gambling machines, or gamble at regional casinos, stop for one day. Take the money you would have risked and put it into a bank or credit union account. Open a new account if you want.

2) Any store, restaurant or regional casino operator that offers lottery tickets, electronic gambling machines, or any other form of gambling, is asked to stop for one day on September 29.

3) If you have a loved one or a good friend who is an active gambler, be a sponsor for one day on September 29. As a sponsor, your role is to help your loved one or friend stay away from gambling for the day, encourage them to put the money they would have risked into a bank or credit union (if they don’t have an account, show them how to create one,) and help them participate in other activities to substitute for gambling.

WHY:
1) To spotlight the millions of ordinary citizens and their families who have been harmed by government-sanctioned gambling. This growing campaign first began in Oregon more than 20 years ago out of the work of Ronda Hatefi, a member of Stop Predatory Gambling. Ronda’s brother Bobby Hafemann took his life because he became addicted to electronic gambling machines pushed by Oregon state government. Every year on September 29th, her late brother’s birthday, Ronda has organized a day to spotlight the serious harm the state’s gambling machines were having on citizens.

2) To awaken the public consciousness about how the widespread promotion and availability of extreme forms of commercialized gambling is a major factor behind the financial hardship and unfairness of opportunity facing millions of American families today.

3) To educate Americans on the truth that financial security occurs most often from the act of regularly saving small sums of money over the long-term.

4) To give families and friends a way to start a conversation about gambling with the people they love.

5) To offer an opportunity for gambling operators to acknowledge they have a duty of care for citizens.

KEY FACTS:

– Americans are on course to lose more than $1 trillion of their personal wealthto government-sanctioned gambling over the next eight years. They lost $118 billion in 2018.[1] Many of these citizens are suffering life-changing financial losses.

– Citizens who are financially desperate look to government-sanctioned gambling as a way to improve their lives and help them escape their financial condition.[2] It’s become a Hail Mary investment strategy, one that dooms them to inevitable failure and personal debt. This is a critical issue because asset-building, the opposite of commercialized gambling, is almost non-existent for nearly half of the nation’s population.

– The health of millions of Americans has been severely harmed because of the dangerous practices of government-sanctioned gambling. At least 1 out of every 20 citizens has had their lives turned upside down because they became gambling addicted.^[3] This figure doesn’t account for the several people close to them, like family, friends, and co-workers, whose lives also have been diminished.

– Because of government-sanctioned gambling, all taxpayers, regardless whether they ever gamble, end up paying higher taxes for less services, and the state ends up with worse budget problems over the long term. It’s the ultimate budget gimmick.[4] You pay even if you don’t play.

– Wrongly exempt from truth-in-advertising laws,government-sanctioned gambling is an antiquated, outdated policy and a relic of past failures of leadership. Each year state governments spend more than $1 billion of public money marketing gambling to the most financially-disadvantaged citizens. The state’s gambling monopolies are exempt from truth-in-advertising laws, allowing them to grossly exaggerate the chances of winning and lure citizens into losing their money on gambling games that they are mathematically guaranteed to get fleeced.[5]

– The nation’s political elite – from both political parties- have transformed gambling from a private and local activity into the daily public voice of state government, such that ever-increasing appeals to gamble, and ever-expanding opportunities to gamble, now constitute the main ways that our state governments communicate with us on a daily basis. Nothing else comes even close.

Stop Predatory Gambling: Who We Are

A 501c3 non-profit based in Washington, DC, Stop Predatory Gambling is a national government reform network of more than one million individuals and organizations. We believe in improving people’s lives with compassion and fairness, freeing us from the lower standard of living, exploitation and fraud that commercialized gambling spreads.

SOURCES:

[1] “This is how much Americans lost on state-sanctioned gambling last year,” Quentin Fottrell of MarketWatch, published by Dow Jones Media, May 15, 2018. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-how-much-americans-lost-on-state-sanctioned-gambling-last-year-2018-05-15

[2] Cornell Univ. Professor David Just, “The big swindle: In lotteries, the poor are the biggest losers,” CNN, Dec. 18, 2013https://www.cnn.com/2013/12/18/opinion/lottery-poor-just-opinion/index.html

[3] National Institute for Health, May 2011 http://newsinhealth.nih.gov/issue/May2011/Feature1

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[4] Lucy Dadayan, State Revenues from Gambling: Short-Term Relief, Long-Term Disappointment, The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government (2016), http://www.rockinst.org/pdf/government_finance/2016-04-12-Blinken_Report_Three.pdf

[5] “This is how much Americans lost on state-sanctioned gambling last year,” The Wall Street Journal’s Marketwatch, May 15, 2018, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-how-much-americans-lost-on-state-sanctioned-gambling-last-year-2018-05-15

David Collings, Sharon Collard and Jamie Evans, Personal Finance Research Centre, University of Bristol

Back in July we published a review of bank card gambling blockers – a feature that allows a debit or credit card customer to block their account or card from being used for gambling transactions. Working with GambleAware, we evaluated the potential for these blockers to help those who want to control their gambling.

Our review brought together bank data on customer use of blockers; discussions with treatment providers, firms and regulatory bodies; and, crucially, insights from over 100 interviews and surveys with people who have lived experience of gambling. It showed that blocker technology works and can help people control their gambling spend, but card blockers need to be more widely available than is currently the case. And, where offered, their design should incorporate elements of ‘positive friction’ in the form of ‘cooling-off’ periods.

Making gambling blocks more widely available

At the time our report was written, eight firms advertised and offered blockers to their customers either on credit cards, debit cards or both. These include five of the nine largest banks and building societies in the UK – Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, Royal Bank of Scotland Group and Santander – together with three other banks – Cashplus, Monzo and Starling.

We estimated that gambling blocks on debit cards are available for roughly 60% of personal current accounts (around 49 million accounts) and at least 40% of credit card customers (roughly 26 million cards). But if Santander and the Royal Bank of Scotland Group were to offer gambling blockers to all their debit card customers, we estimate that blockers would be available for around 90% of current accounts (equivalent to 70 million accounts – 22 million more than at present).

Making sure gambling blockers include ‘positive friction’

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Increasing availability of these blocks isn’t enough on its own. Our findings show that blockers need to include ‘positive friction’ in the form of ‘cooling-off’ periods – to encourage time and reflection before someone can gamble again – in order to be effective.

As the table above shows, five of the eight firms offering blockers included a cooling-off period – a period after a customer disables the block before they can gamble again – while the remaining three blockers could immediately be toggled on and off, meaning they functioned more like a light switch than a lock.

But this is a fast-changing landscape. In September Barclays announced it is introducing a 72 hour cooling-off period to its gambling blocker, responding to customer feedback about the positive impact of such a delay, making it the first bank to introduce a cooling-off period off this length. This customer feedback echoes findings from our research, where nearly 60% of respondents with lived experience of gambling felt that a cooling-off period should be longer than 48 hours.

In fact, the message from those affected by gambling was clear: the more positive friction that can be built into a bank blocker, the better. Our research also explored other examples of positive friction that could be beneficial, including making gambling blocks the default on new bank cards, or automatic alerts for third parties such as a friend or family member related to gambling spend.

More to be done

Our interviews with banks highlighted three main motivations for developing and implementing gambling blocks: ‘soft’ pressure from regulators; evidence of customer harm from gambling; and market ‘peer pressure’ as other banks launched gambling blocks for their card customers.

We therefore reiterate our call on the Financial Conduct Authority as part of its forthcoming guidance on the fair treatment of vulnerable customers to recommend that gambling blocks are standard on all credit and debit cards and require customers to wait at least 48 hours between turning off the blocker and being able use that card to gamble.

Finally, introducing gambling blockers shouldn’t be seen as ‘job done’ for banks and building societies – there is much more work to do and the purpose of our three-year MAGPIE research programme is to help progress that agenda. Similarly, other organisations beyond banks still need to be taking robust action to reduce gambling harms.

The Personal Finance Research Centre’s Money and Gambling: Practice, Insight, Evidence, or MAGPIE for short, is a three-year independent programme funded by GambleAware to explore ways in which the UK financial services industry can help reduce gambling harms. Please visit the project’s website to find out more about the programme and to find out how to get involved.