You omitted that you sent the required scan of the card.
As for regulation and i'll keep this short (since some clever fold here called us out) - its a simple AML source of funds rule. PAyouts must be returned to the source of funds.
Say your card gets scanned on an ATM and sold on black market. Some hacker uses it to deposit and empty your account, plays a tiny amount (1x turnover) and asks to withdraw the balance to a different payment method or card... the rule prevents this money to be laundered as we will demand the funds to be paid out to the originating source.
This rule is as old as time and 15 years ago when i started working for largest British operators - it was the primary AML rule. Not that we have to justify to anyone whether it is regulation or not mind you - its in the terms and its our policy. Its a good policy at that and prevented many-a-crook.
Thanks
A replacement card for the same bank account IS compliant with the regulations as it is returning the money to source. This should never have been a problem because it was a replacement card for the same account, not a different card for a new account.
The regulation itself can't be adhered to when players deposit via MasterCard in any case, so surely the regulators would have forced Mastercard to comply with such AML rules if it was deemed that important. However, they chose not to, and casinos have chosen to accept deposit methods that force them to deviate from AML regulations when paying withdrawals.
Things would be even better if government forced the banks to use systems that allowed the seamless application of AML procedures by merchants, then the banking systems would cope seamlessly with this kind of situation, and customers would be told how it works.
In fact, the system CAN cope to some extent, but nowhere in all the accompanying text to getting a replacement card from my bank is it made clear to me what the procedure is for when I receive a merchant refund that resulted from a purchase made from the old card that has now expired, been cut up, and thrown in the bin as per bank terms and conditions. If players knew this, they would realise that this type of issue is only likely to delay receipt of the withdrawal in their account by a day or two, not cause it to be lost altogether. The problem is, we are not told this, and not all banks are trusted to deal with such a situation properly, and we know that on occasion banks DO lose our money, so we worry about doing anything that is not considered "normal procedure" in case the banks are even more likely to not know what they are doing and lose our money more often.
In my experience, when things like this have happened, and the worst offender was Neteller who kept replacing the correct sort code with the wrong one, my bank has not lost my money. However, I did get a message from my bank about Neteller always using the wrong sort code, and that they were fed up of sorting the issue out their end and that in future they would refuse the payment and asked me to convey this to Neteller. However, even if this is how a bank deals with a payment to an expired card, the money is not lost, it's sent back to source, who would then be obligated to pay via a working method.
There is always a need for flexibility because these systems don't work as they are expected to under AML regulations, so those applying AML regulations need to do so in a fair manner for the customer (this is also law in the UK). If a customer's money is lost due to a too inflexible approach to AML, the merchant has simply broken one law in order to remain compliant with another, and will be in trouble for a different reason.
There is an even worse scenario for British players. We are being encouraged to "shop around" and switch bank accounts via a regulated fast and seamless switching service. Using this can create a situation where a player is sent a withdrawal to an old account that has been closed automatically as part of this scheme. The scheme is designed such that everything is automatically moved over to the new account so that the customer doesn't have to go around informing anyone. This is far more likely to lead to money getting lost in the system where it is sent to the old bank, but because the account is now closed, staff will refuse to deal with the customer who's money they have, so they can only trust that the bank will pick this up and forward it to the new account as part of the mop up from the switch. This will lead to arguments because it will be the casino that has "lost the money", and they too will find they hit a brick wall at the old bank when trying to make enquiries as to where it went.
This kind of thing is happening all the time in the US, and vast amounts of money destined for players has simply vanished into the ether because processors have to change accounts and pathways so frequently that many changes happen during the time it takes the money to travel from the casino to the player. Of course ALL the casinos (bar the state licensed ones) involved in the US market are flouting AML in a big way, but they do so because it's profitable, and unless they are daft enough to leave one of their execs on US soil, they largely get away with it. This is a considerable level of flexibility being used to accommodate US players, regardless of the AML laws. From a players' point of view, it's a case of casinos being able to pick and choose whether or not to obey the laws in any given situation, so if they can be flexible in one situation, they can damn well be flexible in another.
) with regards to electronic verification and not having to send documents at all. (in certain cases, not BetAt in this particular case)
