Earlier this week it was reported that Monzo was asking the UK government to make available gambling blocks for everyone. Monzo said that around two million people in Britain are experiencing harm caused by gambling. Today it was announced that Monzo and TrueLayer are partnering on an open banking pilot to power a Gambling Block feature.
Currently, customers can apply a block to their Monzo account themselves in the app or by speaking to a member of Monzo’s customer services team but the partnership with TrueLayer may augment or replace the existing feature.
Due to the advent of open banking more and more gambling providers are switching to open banking powered payments thus enabling the same protections for customers using these new payment methods.
Now, TrueLayer will automatically let Monzo know, via an API call, any time their customer attempts an open banking payment to a gambling firm specifically. This additional data access enables Monzo to prevent the payment on the customers’ behalf if they have their gambling block activated.
The service is said to be relatively simple for banks and open banking providers to put in place.
Monzo states that its gambling block has been in place since 2018 and more than 275,000 people are currently using it. The company states that once it is established over 80% keep it on meaning they currently block up to 585,000 gambling transactions a month.
