Friday, January 07, 2011

Things They Should Invent: link the gambling self-exclusion list to credit and debit cards

A Toronto Star article on how the OLG self-exclusion list isn't working includes the story of how a guy on the self-exclusion list still manages to get Visa cash advances at a casino.

Solution: when people join the self-exclusion list, they can provide their credit and debit card numbers, and the casinos can set up something so that those numbers get flagged in the system. Maybe they could even make it so the computer simply will not permit cashiers or ATMs to dispense money to those cards on casino property.

The obvious argument against this is privacy, but the exclusion list is already voluntary, so they could easily make this part voluntary too. And maybe they could even come up with a way to do it without informing the banks and credit card companies so as not to hurt people's credit scores any more than they're already being hurt by the financial fall-out of problem gambling.

1 comment:

Lorraine said...

The "F"ICO credit scoring system needs to be disassembled. If it can be stripped of its proprietary methods and accountability to no one, then positive reforms such as you propose would be second nature. People understand that privacy is a lost cause. Today's battle is against asymmetric information and asymmetric power relations concerning information.