Today the Gambling Watchdog announced a ban on Credit Cards being used for online gambling. The ban will come into effect in April 2020.
There are 430,000 problem gamblers in the UK at present with another 2 million considered at risk.
At present most major betting sites allow Credit Cards to be used. 49% of online gamblers say they use Credit Cards meaning they can get more into debt then if they were paying another way.
When using a Debit card people are using money that they have rather than money that they don’t have when using a Credit Card. They are not increasing their debt, storing up a problem that they think they can solve when they win big. Research shows that some problem gamblers use multiple credit cards creating multiple levels of debt that they simply can’t pay back.
This may push people into other forms of credit i.e. Payday Loans with sky high interests rates that ratchet up debt very, very quickly. Turning a small gambling problem into a huge personal debt very quickly.
At Wellbeing Hypnotherapy & Mindfulness we work with gambling addiction as part of our addiction therapy using Hypnotherapy and Mindfulness-based Cognitive Behavioural Therapies. We can help people who see that they have a problem and want to resolve it.
See our addiction page for more information
