A politician has said that the Northern Ireland Executive must urgently ban gambling with credit cards.
Earlier this week regulations came into force in England, Scotland and Wales to prevent the use of credit cards in online gambling.
Kellie Armstrong, MLA for Strangford, says that Northern Ireland must follow the example of the rest of the UK to help vulnerable gamblers.
Lockdown
Kellie Armstrong, who is also communities spokeswoman for the Alliance Party, said: “Gambling with credit cards allows people to use money they don’t have.
“For addicts, this can be too tempting a proposition to ignore, particularly at a time when online and virtual gambling is more popular than ever before.
“The coronavirus lockdown may also lead to an increase in people using these outlets, so this legislation is more important than ever.”
She added: “We now need a similar law for Northern Ireland.”
Addiction
Earlier this month, it was revealed that gamblers searching for mobile apps to help their addiction were bombarded with adverts tempting them to bet instead.
When searching for “gambling stop” and “block gambling” on Apple’s App Store, Daily Mail reporters found promotions for Ladbrokes Casino, 888 Casino, and Virgin Games Casino appeared as top results.
Apps to help addicts and block gambling transactions on phones only appeared beneath the sponsored listings.
GVC, which owns Ladbrokes, said it was “liaising closely with Apple to understand how this could have happened and have suspended our Apple search advertising with immediate effect”.