Revolut Stops Credit Card Gambling Payments in UK

Revolut, a banking services provider with its head office located in London, has announced that it will no longer be allowing its cards to fund gambling in the UK, whether that be online or in person.

The move follows the introduction by the Gambling Commission of an all-out ban on credit card payments for the purposes of gambling in the country.

Credit Card Ban Taking Full Effect

The card ban, which came into full effect on April 14, means that gambling companies operating in the UK can now not accept payments via credit card or via money services such as Revolut.

The new requirements were first announced back in January by the Gambling Commission in conjunction with the government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport and apply to all gambling products both online and offline with certain exceptions.

For now, non-remote lottery purchases including scratch cards and National Lottery tickets bought via retailers are not included in the ban, somewhat controversially.

The new requirements also cover credit card payments made to e-wallets which are then used to fund gambling, with gambling companies only allowed to accept e-wallet payments if they have themselves already blocked credit cards as a funding method.

Revolut Publicly On Board with Credit Card Gambling Ban

Revolut, in a public statement which followed their decision, have said that while many people still gamble responsibly using their credit cards, the aim of the new regulations as far as they are aware is to protect those most at risk from gambling money they don’t have. This is not something Revolut wants to be seen as being a part of.

Revolut customers who has been using their cards for gambling payments will, as of April 14, need to use a different card to fund their accounts where that be a non-Revolut or non-credit card.

About Revolut

After a funding round back in February of this year, Revolut was named the UK’s most valuable financial technology start-up having been given an extra £4.2billion.

That sum more than tripled their value with Technology Crossover Ventures, wise venture capitalists who had previously bought into both Spotify and Netflix, investing $500million.

Registered as Revolut Limited, the firm is a British financial tech business offering banking services in pounds and Euros as well as providing a MasterCard pre-paid debit card, VISA debit card, currency exchanges free of charge, stock trading, cryptocurrency exchanges and peer-to-peer payments.

After launching a Revolut app, the firm were able to support spending and ATM withdrawals in well over 100 currencies while also providing access for users to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash and XRP exchanges to and from 25 currencies.

Originally founded in London in 2015 by Vlad Yatsenko and Nikolay Storonsky, Revolut was based in Canary Wharf and has made very big strides in a short space of time.

While the new Gambling Commissions could prove to be a blow for them and other providers, at least in the short term until they get used to how customers move their money, they are without doubt gaining some very good publicity by proactively banning their customers from using their cards to fund betting accounts.

It will be very interesting to see if, in the near future, other financial providers choose independently to block the use of their cards for lottery payments too.