Should Aussie-facing online gambling operators panic? Have Australian banks just blocked “all gambling and gaming” payments?

According to that bastion of well-informed reporting, CalvinAyre.com:

“Australia’s gamblers will need to find other funding sources after a local bank became the latest to ban credit card transactions for gambling purposes.” 

But, before you reach for the emergency bottle of scotch, let’s just clear things up a little. There’s no need to panic – not yet anyway.  

Although Australian banks, like those elsewhere, have been introducing optional blocking tools, and last year the Australian National Banking Association (ABA) did indeed launch a public consultation about the role banks should play in tackling problem gambling, the story reported by Calvin Ayre actually refers to a bank so small that it’s unlikely operators will notice any impact. 

You see, although ‘Bank Australia’ sounds like some gigantic mainstream bank, with millions of customers, it’s actually an obscure local bank based in a suburb of Melbourne. According to Wikipedia, Bank Australia had just 135,786 members in 2018, and reported net income of just $19.63M AUD (approx. €12.07M) in 2020. 

In fact, Bank Australia has just 16 branches nationwide, and is ranked 10th out of the Customer Owned Banking Association members. To put it in perspective, Bank Australia’s assets come in at $2.8B AUD, compared to Australia’s biggest bank, Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) which had assets of $933.078B in 2016. 

Now, I’m not trying to bash Bank Australia here – I’m sure it’s a perfectly good little bank – rather the point is that the sky is not falling in Australia. One very small local bank has blocked gambling payments using its credit card, while other larger banks are merely introducing responsible gambling tools for customers – which is a good thing. 

So, in reality, hardly any Australian gamblers will “need to find other funding sources.”

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