Gambling block
If you want help with your gambling, our gambling block is an optional tool that you can apply to your account in the app. If you prefer to talk to someone first, you can start a chat with our customer support team who will tell you more about how it works, help you to switch it on, and point to other sources of support and information.
The scale of the problem
Around 2 million people* in Britain experience harm caused by gambling – like getting into debt, losing your job, falling out with family and friends, and more. If you're concerned with your own gambling, or you're being affected by the experience of someone close to you then we're here to help.
*Information taken from Behavioural Insight Teams' Applying behavioural insights to design safer gambling tools
How it works
Every time you spend on your Monzo card, the transaction is tagged with information about what you're spending money on. This is how we can build tools like spending categories for helping you budget. Every time you spend money with a gambling operator, the transaction is tagged with a gambling merchant category code (MCC). When you turn the gambling block on, we decline any gambling transactions before they go through.
Turning the gambling block off
We know that the decision to gamble can often be an impulsive one. So we ask you to make some extra effort if you want to remove the restrictions. To turn off the block, you'll need to talk to someone in our customer support team first. We might use that conversation to ask you questions like, “Has your situation changed since you first switched on the restrictions?” to help you think through your reasons for turning it off.
Time to cool down
If you decide that you do want to turn off the block, we give you 48-hours before you can switch it off from the app yourself. We hope this added ‘friction’ gives you a little time and space to work out whether the decision to gamble again is the right one for you. This results in low numbers of customers turning the block off. Less than 10% of the total number of customers who’ve ever used the gambling block since it’s launch in June 2018 have since disabled it.
Our support
We understand that gambling more than you'd like can have a wider impact on your health and financial wellbeing, so we have a specialist support team who can discuss your situation and talk you through everything we can offer to help you with your Monzo account, as well as point you in the direction of external organisations who can support you too. We can also discuss other measures we can help you put on your account to offer more protection, such as spending limit reductions. The gambling block works best alongside other methods of self exclusion, such as blocking software and self exclusion programmes like GAMSTOP.
Our campaign to improve gambling protections for everyone in the UK
In 2018 we researched, developed and launched a feature that allows our customers to block gambling transactions. It was the first of its kind, offering a friction based banking tool to help people with gambling addiction to self exclude. Now around 60% of banks offer this feature, and over 300,000 Monzo customers have used it. This year, we’ve teamed up with charities, academics and NHS clinicians to ask the government to make sure everyone can access a gambling block, no matter who they bank with.
