Lloyds Gambling Block
High street bank group Lloyds has announced a new arrangementwith technology operator Gamban, which will give customers from Halifax,Bank of Scotland and Lloyds access to state of the art gambling blocking software.
The technology is designed to provide protection on alldevices, using the Android, iOS, MacOS or Windows operating systems. It willenable customers to block thousands of apps and gambling sites and wasintegrated into the Lloyds systems at the end of last month.
Lloyds, Santander, and RBS have approved proposals to develop payment-blocking functions that are set to affect transactions made in high street bookmakers and online betting sites and provide greater protections to those who have an issue with compulsive gambling. Lloyds, Santander and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) have indicated that they will introduce new tools in 2019 to enable customers to block payment on certain types of spending, such as gambling or retail. This follows the introduction of similar measures by Monzo, Starling and Barclays last year. Quickly and easily block gambling websites and apps on all of your devices. Try Gamban for free for 7 days. 200,000 customers use the blocking service at Starling Bank, while Monzo’s gambling block is currently being used by 220,000 of their customers. Elsewhere, Lloyds’ stats stand at 120,000 and HSBC have a further 30,000 people not allowing payments to be made to betting companies.
Speaking about the arrangement, the founder of Gamban,Jack Symons, said that it represented a step forward towards protectingvulnerable customers:
“It’s very positive to see forward-thinking bankinginstitutions such as Lloyds Banking Group rise to the challenge of protectingvulnerable customers from gambling addiction through barriers such as spendcontrol and collaboration with market-leading gambling-blocking technology,Gamban.”
The collaboration will further add to Lloyds’ reputationfor offering gambling protection. The Group has already added a Gambling TransactionFreezes tool to its mobile gambling app, which is designed to protect customersfrom the threat of gambling harm.
The Gamban system, which is designed to be used by individualswho suffer gambling problems, gives customers the ability to block betting platforms,while also providing live support.
Welcoming the arrangement, the director of customer financewith Lloyds, Elyn Corfield, said that the company were aware of the potentiallong term harm that gambling addiction could cause to their customers and theywere determined to ensure that they were able to access support.
The banking group also stressed that they had been workingwith a range of experts in the field of gambling addiction support to ensure theircustomers have quick and easy access to help.
Lloyds Gambling Blocking
The announcement by Lloyds comes against a backdrop ofincreasing pressure on financial companies to do more to protect vulnerable customersfrom gambling harm, which has also led to a complete ban on gambling withcredit cards, effective from April this year.