- Joined
- May 22, 2012
In a move intended to enforce responsible gambling, the UKGC has decided to facilitate affordable gambling (AffGam) checks to all UK online players from August 1st. 2019. This has been as a result of the success of their GAMSTOP initiative and will make full use of the data sharing there available to UK licensed sites.
The system will require both pre-verification for online players integrated with evidence of affordability which customers must provide at any new casino they sign up to following August 1st. This will be shared in real time on the central GAMSTOP database UKGC licensed sites will all be linked to previous to that date.
New players will be required to submit 3 months of Bank Statements upon registration at their first new casino in any calendar month and the baseline monthly spending figure will initially be set a maximum of 25% of the average amount of income for that period. This will be applied regardless of source of income, whether self-employed, employed, pensioned or in receipt of benefits.
Gill Watts-Bule, head of social responsiblity at the UKGC is enthusiastic about the future consequences of the AffGam initiative:
"The AffGam programme brings us into an exciting new era where responsible gambling online is concerned. This system means we need no interaction from banks or payment providers and it utilizes the existing facilities we have at GAMSTOP and the online operators have for KYC checking."
When asked about player freedom of choice regarding expenditure, she replied:
"We anticipate that gamblers need some choice in AffGam, so we will have a monthly option the player can change at the beginning of each month. They can choose the 25% of income to be either a deposit limit or a loss limit on a monthly basis, which means they can still choose to redeposit winnings to exceed this 25% monthly level although once they have a net loss of 25% of income, the players will be automatically barred from all online play until the following month. If they choose the deposit limit, then deposits can only be lower or equal to this 25% figure regardless of withdrawn funds."
We asked about potential loopholes:
"There are no loopholes, as the data from each casino regarding deposits is uploaded in real time. This will prevent a player losing 25% of income and then attempting to play again within the same month at an alternative site. There is also a huge consideration for governments or us at the UKGC in that we can adjust the 25% upwards or downwards effective immediately if interested parties request us to do so. This means theoretically we could reduce the average income amount to 0% thus ceasing all licensed online gambling for the UK population altogether!"
If we weren't f**ked before, we are now.
The system will require both pre-verification for online players integrated with evidence of affordability which customers must provide at any new casino they sign up to following August 1st. This will be shared in real time on the central GAMSTOP database UKGC licensed sites will all be linked to previous to that date.
New players will be required to submit 3 months of Bank Statements upon registration at their first new casino in any calendar month and the baseline monthly spending figure will initially be set a maximum of 25% of the average amount of income for that period. This will be applied regardless of source of income, whether self-employed, employed, pensioned or in receipt of benefits.
Gill Watts-Bule, head of social responsiblity at the UKGC is enthusiastic about the future consequences of the AffGam initiative:
"The AffGam programme brings us into an exciting new era where responsible gambling online is concerned. This system means we need no interaction from banks or payment providers and it utilizes the existing facilities we have at GAMSTOP and the online operators have for KYC checking."
When asked about player freedom of choice regarding expenditure, she replied:
"We anticipate that gamblers need some choice in AffGam, so we will have a monthly option the player can change at the beginning of each month. They can choose the 25% of income to be either a deposit limit or a loss limit on a monthly basis, which means they can still choose to redeposit winnings to exceed this 25% monthly level although once they have a net loss of 25% of income, the players will be automatically barred from all online play until the following month. If they choose the deposit limit, then deposits can only be lower or equal to this 25% figure regardless of withdrawn funds."
We asked about potential loopholes:
"There are no loopholes, as the data from each casino regarding deposits is uploaded in real time. This will prevent a player losing 25% of income and then attempting to play again within the same month at an alternative site. There is also a huge consideration for governments or us at the UKGC in that we can adjust the 25% upwards or downwards effective immediately if interested parties request us to do so. This means theoretically we could reduce the average income amount to 0% thus ceasing all licensed online gambling for the UK population altogether!"
If we weren't f**ked before, we are now.