Sean Coleman, The SA Bookmakers’ Association (Saba) has entered into talks with the SA Responsible Gambling Foundation (SARGF) about prohibiting people living on state support from engaging in online gambling. This is according to Sean Coleman, Saba CEO, in remarks carried in Business Day.
The targets of the initiative would be beneficiaries of social grants and the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS).
South Africa is confronting a headache from the headache with low income people attempting to win big against very steep odds.
“Most of our interactions with the SARGF have been on whether the department of social development could interact with the department of trade, industry & competition and provide us with controlled access to the Sassa database and immediately exclude customers who are attempting to sign up,” Coleman was quoted as saying.
He continued: “The same applies to NSFAS. As an industry we don’t want to onboard customers who are Sassa grant recipients or NSFAS beneficiaries. That money is destined for other things and should achieve those end goals in terms of what the government wants to do. The envisioned guardrails are not within the banking system. My understanding is that Sassa has a database of grant recipients via their ID numbers, and so will NSFAS.”
He said that information protection hurdles would also need to be cleared, but that was not “insurmountable”.
In the 12 month period to March this year, the gambling turnover across all forms and platforms was around R1.5 trillion. Illegal online gambling now accounted for some 62% of online gambling, mostly based in foreign jurisdictions like Curaçao, Malta, Gibraltar and the Philippines.
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