Australians have the unenviable reputation for being the world’s worst gamblers. This means that Aussies end up spending more on gambling activities than any other citizens of the world. There has been a push in recent years for the Australian government to do more to regulate the gambling industry and protect Australian players.
MP Andrew Wallace from Queensland has been a long term opponent of the gambling industry. Wallace is now leading a push to get the government to ban the use of credit cards at all online gambling sites servicing the Australian market.
Australia already has a ban in place for no credit cards to be used at land based casinos throughout the country but no ban in place for credit cards to be used at online gambling sites.
MP Wallace believes that it is imperative for the same credit card ban to be implemented at online casinos as Aussies should not be able to use their credit cards which have a 22 percent interest rate to gamble at land based or online gambling sites.
Four Major Banks In Agreement
Wallace is not just pushing the government to change legislation and ban credit card usage at online gambling sites. He is also working together with the Australian Banking Association (ABA) to get them to reach an agreement and ban credit card usage. He says that the four top banks in Australia (Commonwealth, NAB, ANZ and Westpac) are all in agreement with the proposed credit card ban at online gambling sites.
This is not the first time that there is a push for a credit card gambling ban for iGaming activities in Australia. ABA collected data in 2019 from Aussies to get their opinion on whether a blanket ban on credit card gambling should be imposed or not. The results showed that over 80 percent of Aussies were in favour of a blanket ban while 7 percent said no ban was required. The rest were undecided on the matter.
Some of the smaller banks in Australia have already rolled out a credit card ban for online gambling activities. These banks include Bank of Queensland, Citibank, Suncorp and Macquarie. MP Wallace is now pushing for the four big banks to also ban credit card gambling for iGaming activities.
There is also a push for the ABA to roll out a voluntary code of conduct for the banking industry but ABA representatives have told Wallace that this is difficult to implement.