For more than two decades, PayPal has been at the vanguard of the digital payment revolution. The PayPal platform empowers consumers and companies to participate in and succeed in the global economy by harnessing technology to make financial services and commerce easy, inexpensive, and secure. As crypto payments are extremely popular nowadays, PayPal decided to protect its users by another layer of security.
Introducing GamBan
GamBan, launched in 2015 by ex-gambling addict Jack Symons, is a UK self-exclusion software provider that provides a monthly or annual subscription service to block betting sites and applications across all platforms. The service’s purpose is to assist anyone suffering from compulsive gambling through treatment or willpower.
In 2018, independent research commissioned by GambleAware determined GamBan to be the most successful and cost-effective self-exclusion product on the market. GamBan was founded in response to casino self-exclusion systems, which have shown to be ineffectual for players when they can just migrate to another online casino.
With live assistance and a variety of additional helpful features on its website, the company prides itself on being the most practical way for creating friction and strengthening willpower in the fight against gambling addiction.
In March 2021, Kindred Group, which owns Unibet, became the first US operator to provide GamBan’s gambling banning software to its customers. This partnership is a big step toward their goal of making no money off of problem gambling by 2023.
GamBan Functioning
Unlike self-exclusion solutions offered by virtual casinos, GamBan’s service offers protection across all platforms, including Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android. GamBan blocks access to thousands of gambling websites and even casinos with no GamStop described by Casinogap.org, both online and through smartphone apps, once it is installed.
GamBan, which is designed to help protect those who have gambling addictions, cannot be removed from a device after it has been installed. The application will continue to restrict a user’s access to all forbidden sites until the subscription expires.
All You Need to Know about the New Development
GamBan and PayPal have formed a new relationship, with the payments company allowing its clients in some countries to prohibit gaming transactions.
PayPal has been recognised as a popular mode of payment for gamblers in both online and offline verticals, including sports betting, horse and greyhound racing, person-to-person wagering, and gaming machines, according to the pair.
The collaboration between PayPal and GamBan happened at a time when social responsibility is becoming a greater emphasis of the British betting and gaming business, ahead of the White Paper on the 2005 Gambling Act review.
GamBan sees the relationship as a continuation of its operational remit, having announced last year that it will upgrade its self-exclusion system to limit user interactions and access to FX, crypto, and currency trading platforms.
By engaging in the payments blocking agreement with PayPal, GamBan is also strengthening its position in the US betting market, which has grown rapidly since the removal of PASPA in 2018.
So far, GamBan has collaborated with the Problem Gambling Help Network of West Virginia, Pinnacle, and FanDuel in their major US endeavours. The organisation is situated in Southampton, UK, and New Jersey, USA.
In the United Kingdom, social responsibility initiatives have frequently focused on payment mechanisms. Notably, in April 2020, the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) outlawed the use of credit cards for betting, a policy supported and enforced by members of the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC).
In an update to stakeholders, Andrew Rhodes, Interim Chief Executive of the UKGC, indicated that safeguarding consumers is at the core of what they do, and they implemented this policy as part of their multidimensional commitment to decrease gambling damage.
The successful implementation of the ban across the crypto holders, as well as the impact on customer behaviour and financial expenditure that they have thus far tracked, is optimistic evidence that the prohibition has lowered consumer dependency on gambling with borrowed money.
GamBan’s New PayPal Integration
GamBan lets players prohibit transactions for the following activities as part of the integration:
- Games of skill and chance with a prize provided that needs an entrance cost
- Poker, table games, and slots are just a few of the casino games available.
- Betting on sports through a betting exchange or a bookmaker
- Greyhound and horse racing
- Gambling on a pari-mutuel basis
- Betting outside the beaten path
- Betting on sweepstakes
- Tickets for the lottery
- Betting on a person-to-person basis
- Gambling-related activities such as handicapping or participating in forums where you may gamble against other individuals
In Conclusion
At the moment, there is no simple way for gamers to enable the barring of gambling transactions on PayPal. As a result, GamBan recommends users use the PayPal Message Centre to contact a support person.
We’d want to see a quick-access option that makes it easier for players to set up self-exclusion via PayPal, especially as this is a new connection. This feature is anticipated to arrive soon, and we’ll let you know when it does.
