Gambling: Fees and Charges

(asked on 13th July 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment (a) his Department and (b) the Gambling Commission has made of the level of risk of harm to vulnerable people from permitting gambling charges to be added to post-paid mobile phone bills.


Answered by
Nigel Huddleston Portrait
Nigel Huddleston
Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
This question was answered on 16th July 2020

All operators providing gambling facilities to customers in Great Britain must be licensed by the Gambling Commission and comply with licence conditions. These include requirements to protect vulnerable people from being harmed by gambling and to intervene when a customer shows signs of being at risk of harm, which apply however payments are made.

Payments made by mobile phone are capped by the Payment Services Regulations 2017 at £40 per transaction, up to a total of £240 per month. These limits cover all services charged to phone bills, such as gambling and music downloads. They are not a common means of spending on gambling, currently accounting for around 0.4% of the annual gross gambling yield (including lotteries). In addition to the regulatory requirements of the Commission, the Phone-Paid Services Authority also regulates services that involve charges to phone bills.

Phone payments do not represent a breach of rules banning credit card payments for gambling but the Gambling Commission has committed to evaluate the impact of the ban, including looking at displacement to other payment methods. They will continue to monitor the use of phone-paid payments as part of that evaluation.

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