UK is one of the countries which had introduced better regulations and licensing rules for online casinos as well as many poker sites. Now, they are again trying to frame better rules for regulating the activities of online casinos in order to make them safer for players.
Need for Regulation
There has been no development regarding regulating the activities of online casinos for many years. Despite the increasing number of online casinos, very little attention has been paid by the authorities towards the licensing aspect. Though there are some existing rules, they are not being followed by the industry players.
Latest Case of PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker
Recently due to a case that happened in April, the US made some stringent measure to tackle the security lapses in online casinos. Full Tilt who had secured the license from Alderney did not require its online casino to hold any funds required for refunding to the players. Everything went for a toss when Full Tilt stopped allowing US players to play in their online casino. They did not refund the money to players who had deposited money. The matter became worse when Full Tilt did not have enough money to refund to players when their license for gaming was suspended. This created lot of chaos among players as they became aware of the rules only then. It resulted in many players suffering heavy losses.
This was the time when people who were visiting online casinos started thinking about how secure these online casinos were. The US passed very stringent regulations in order to provide a safer gaming experience to players in online casinos. PokerStars is a very good example. They were given license by the Isle of Man. They were required to maintain sufficient funds depending upon the volume of business in order to meet the refund demands of players. When their license was suspended, they had enough funds to refund around $100 million to players from the US without any hiccups.
New regulations for licensing and to curb fraud and theft
The regulations and licensing requirements of online casinos are being reviewed by the Culture, Media and Sports Department in the UK. A lot of factors are being taken into consideration in order to frame better legislation to ensure that online casinos in UK are safe and secure.
Factors being taken into consideration include better rules for accounting for online casinos, rules for limiting the advertising campaign and sponsorship programs by online casinos, better and effective measures to curb fraud and theft and many more. All this will help provide a better environment for players so that they can play in online casinos without any problem. Due to the growing number of cases of fraud and theft, a lot of discussion is being held for framing rules for curbing the same.
In the US, authorities have started their campaign against fraud in online casinos by introducing better legislative measures. Very soon, even the UK government is expected to implement such measures. In the next few months, a lot of drastic changes are expected to be seen in the way licensing is done in UK online casinos.