Tabcorp wants banks to be responsible for credit card ban
Tabcorp has said it will support a ban on credit card use for gambling but that banks should be responsible for enforcing it.
Australia.- David Attenborough, Tabcorp’s CEO, has said the company will grudgingly accept plans to ban credit card gambling in Australia but wants banks to be responsible for enforcing the ban.
He argues that the financial sector is best placed to implement a ban given its infrastructure and the customer data it has available.
Attenborough said: “I’m not sitting here saying I accept a ban on credit cards for gambling. I’m saying if the committee decides it’s going to ban it, we’re not going to oppose it for online wagering.”
He said: “If this is the solution chosen by the committee, we will support it, but the legislation needs to be applied to the financial sector because they are best able to implement this.”
He added: “If we got more information from the banks that a card was suspect, we could shut it down. If the banks notified us that this was a problem, we would be able to stop dealing with that problem, but this flow of information doesn’t happen.”
Tabcorp’s CEO said only 14 per cent of online betting transactions use credit cards. He noted that credit cards can no longer be used credit cards in retail environments like bars, clubs, or racetracks.
He also noted that the use of credit cards in online wagering with Tabcorp was declining but said that a problem gambler will always find ways of getting around blocks or bans, suggesting that a national regulator is the only way to resolve the issue.
He added that a large proportion of people who use credit cards to gamble do so responsibly and use them for convenience. He admitted that the practice does have risks but said Tabcord “has a lot of control around it.”
Tabcorp has previously said a ban on credit cards would need at least a year to be implemented to allow the industry time to adapt to the changes. It also warned that it could lead to unintended consequences as Tabcorp has lost ground to online competitors.
The debate around the use of credit cards for online gambling began back in 2019. Credit cards are already banned from being used at casinos, but the same restrictions do not apply for the digital gambling sector.
In March, Queensland MP Andrew Wallace said that Australia’s four biggest banks backed plans to ban credit card spending on online gambling. Some banks have already introduced a ban.
Tabcorp to use artificial intelligence to offer sports wagering
Tabcorp has announced it will roll out an artificial intelligence (AI) programme to predict the results of American Football games. The strategic move is aimed at helping the operator to avoid losing ground to rivals such as Ladbrokes and Sportsbet as players turn to online gambling amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
David Beirne, general manager of trading at Tabcorp, said “artificial intelligence will significantly increase the betting markets which sports fans can bet on.”
The AI tool will run more than 1,000 simulations to predict outcomes for American Football Games. Beirne says that for a single NFL game, players will have more than 120 possible outcomes to bet on. The platform be tested on NFL games but could be used for tennis and NBA games in the future.
