Australia to launch national self-exclusion program
BetStop, the self-exclusion initiative of Australia, will be launching in August.
The new self-exclusion program, the concept of which was originally introduced last year, will be going live in Australia on the 21st of August. BetStop will be a free service available to local gamblers across all of Australia’s states and will work on all of the country’s licensed gambling operators.
BetStop will only support self-excluding from all gambling operators and types at once, meaning registered gamblers will not be able to place wagers at any of Australia’s around 150 regulated operators. The minimum self-exclusion period will be three months, with the scheme’s maximum supported period being a lifetime one.
The self-exclusion scheme will be supervised and run by the country’s media authority, ACMA, which will also be responsible for promoting the program through awareness initiatives. The country will also introduce a new requirement for licensed operators to promote the service as well.
Furthermore, along with this announcement, Australia’s government will soon be introducing enhanced mandatory player verification requirements for operators, which will prohibit users from placing bets before their identities have been fully verified. This will be replacing the previous system, which allowed unverified users to gamble up to three days before they completed their identity checks.