Gambling support and spending controls

The Commission’s technical standard on financial limits sets what a licensed online casino must offer. Limit facilities have to be available from the moment of registration, and a customer must be prompted to set one at registration or at the first deposit. Setting a limit must be presented as the default choice. The minimum on offer is a gross deposit limit: a ceiling on the total paid into the account across a set period. No other kind of limit can carry the name deposit limit. Once it is reached, the system stops further deposits until the period restarts or the customer raises the limit.

Raising a limit and lowering one follow different rules. An increase happens only when the customer asks for it, once twenty-four hours of cooling-off have passed, and only after the customer confirms it at the end of that wait. A reduction must apply immediately unless a system failure prevents it. Under the same standard, the homepage must carry a direct link into the limit facilities, and deposit pages must show them or link to them. So a casino’s deposit page should show a way into limit settings, either on the page or one link away.

Other account tools sit beside limits. Gambling websites must give access to historic account activity, showing when, how much and on what a customer has gambled. A reality check sets on-screen alerts about time spent. A specific casino game can also be blocked, which the Commission notes is not possible with sports betting.

A time-out at a casino blocks gambling there for up to six weeks. After a self-exclusion agreement, that operator has to shut the account, pay back any balance and remove the customer from its marketing lists. Each gambling business must run its own self-exclusion arrangements, so a player can choose to exclude from just one business.

Gamstop Online is a free tool for people who live in the UK, covering Great Britain and Northern Ireland. One registration excludes them from all licensed gambling websites and apps. Its terms describe it as covering online and other remote gambling, such as betting by phone or text, with operators licensed for Great Britain. Since 31 March 2020, membership has been a condition of every such operator’s Commission licence. Betting shops have a separate scheme, Gamstop Betting Shops.

At registration a person chooses the minimum period: half a year, a single year or five years, with the five-year option able to renew automatically. During that period the exclusion cannot be removed. Reaching the end of it does not lift the exclusion. The person must contact GAMSTOP to deactivate it, and a cooling-off wait of no less than twenty-four hours follows that request. Without that contact, it continues for as long as seven more years.

Matching works on personal details. GAMSTOP compares the details given at registration with those a person gives a gambling company when signing up. It is most effective when those details are kept up to date. Online companies with a Great Britain licence must check with GAMSTOP whenever someone tries to register or log in, and check existing customers daily. Money left in a casino account when an exclusion starts is the operator’s to return, not GAMSTOP’s.

Barclays, HSBC and Starling each let a customer block gambling payments on a debit card, as their own help pages explain. According to the Commission, many banks offer a similar limit, by blocking the account or the debit card. Barclays does it in its app, where a debit card can refuse whole payment categories, gambling companies among them. Switching gambling payments back on is followed by a wait before gambling is possible again. HSBC’s restriction can go on any HSBC debit card. It declines payments to companies coded as gambling, including digital wallet payments such as Apple Pay and Google Pay. Payments made through Open Banking fall outside it, though a casino’s deposit limits and GAMSTOP, both above, still cover that route. HSBC adds that a company without a gambling code cannot be identified, and that a cooling-off period applies after the restriction is turned off. Starling’s gambling block, in the card controls of its app, stops all card transactions to registered gambling merchants.

PayPal runs a block of its own on the wallet side, set out on PayPal at UK casino cashiers.

Blocking software installed on a phone or computer lets its user block that device’s access to gambling websites and other online gambling services. The Commission gives GamBan as one example. Free provision of Gamban through the TalkBanStop partnership ended on 31 March 2026. Gamban said that from that date it would move to a subscription service in England and Scotland and stay free for residents of Wales.

GamCare, which founded the National Gambling Helpline and runs it, answers on 0808 8020 133 for England and Scotland. That number can be phoned or messaged on WhatsApp, and a live chat with a helpline adviser runs on GamCare’s own site. It is open around the clock, every day of the year. Each channel is listed on GamCare’s page for talking to an adviser.

For Wales, the NHS operates a helpline of its own. Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board opened it on 1 April 2026, together with an all-Wales gambling treatment service. It is open around the clock and free from a landline or mobile, even with no credit left. The Commission lists it on its safer gambling page as 0808 2819 265.