SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
UK Challenger bank Monzo has revealed that its users are increasingly utilising its gambling block functionality as a means of self-exclusion.
According to internal data released by the company, 8% more users have activated their gambling blocks since they were made more accessible in 2023.
In 2024 alone, a total of £9m in transactions were blocked. The average monthly volume of gambling payments totalled an estimated £800k, which constituted an increase of 20% compared to the £657k figure in 2023.
Monzo’s gambling block itself is not a permanent feature, with customers able to choose from a variety of cooldown periods. The challenger back highlighted that 75% of its customers opted in for at least 48 hours of time limits, while 41% chose a 12-month cooldown period.
Kate Graham, Vulnerability Manager at Monzo, said: “By staying close to our customers, we build and evolve products and features like the Gambling Block that help them to transform their relationship with money.
“Hearing from them about the impact our latest additions to the tool have made is fantastic, even more so because so many customers are controlling the urge to gamble by reading notes they’ve written to themselves in the Monzo app and choosing longer cooldown periods than ever.”
The figures come at a time of significant change for the UK gambling sector, as the government is looking to adapt recommendations from the Gambling Act White Paper Review that will bring the 2005 Gambling Act into the digital age.
