US
Banks Block I-gaming
Ten
more US banks have blocked the use of their credit cards for
online gambling.
The
trend started by Citibank last year seems to be becoming ever
more popular. People’s Bank is amongst the latest set
of American banks to take up the policy.
Eliot
Spitzer, New York Attorney General, made the announcement
that he believes reflects a moral obligation the banks have
to society: “This is a turning point in the credit card
industry.”
The trend is certainly unprecedented. Who’d have thought
a bank would ever stop customers potentially racking up small
fortunes of gambling debt on high interest credit cards? Surely
that’s not good business sense. Especially from credit
card companies that seem to regularly sink vast amounts of
money into encouraging their customers to get into debt. But
clearly Spitzer and his investigations believe that a banks
‘moral obligation’ to fleecing society applies only
to gamblers.
New York is to be paid a total of $335,000 by the banks to
cover the costs associated with the investigation led by Spitzer’s
office. The payment is part of a settlement that sees the
banks being bullied into submission by legal guardians intent
on battling I-gaming. A spokesperson for the office explains
this policy as: 'a trend in law enforcement to focus on intermediaries
in combating illegal online activity.'
Yet the move to discourage credit card companies from permitting
transactions related to online gambling is not new. Last June
Citibank was put under investigation that finished with the
bank blocking I-gaming transactions and paying out $400,000
to a charity that helps problem gamblers.
Since then a whole new wave of online payment alternatives,
including Citadel, have risen to fill the void left by the
banks. As illegal online gambling in the US continues to rise
it would appear that fighting the battle by attacking the
credit card companies hasn’t left a scratch.
source:
onlinecasinonews.com
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