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Cyprus is not the first market to consider whether to block its welfare recipients from using their benefits to gamble, Brazil introduced a similar ban in 2025.
During a session of the House Audit Committee last Thursday, members of parliament (MPs), the Data Protection Commissioner and representatives from the Welfare Benefits Administration Service (WBAS), the Gaming & Casino Supervision Commission and the National Betting Authority (NBA) convened to discuss ways to identify and restrict gambling activity among GMI beneficiaries, as reported by Cyprus Mail.
While the intention is to protect vulnerable households and ensure welfare is spent on essential needs, proposed measures are being complicated by legal, technical and privacy obstacles.
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“The fact that suspension has been considered necessary in this case therefore indicates that the Commission presently considers the issues sufficiently significant to justify preventing the operators from continuing to offer gambling while its reviews are ongoing.”
For any consumer-facing businesses, a suspension is likely existential and such appears to have been the case here. But wider implications have to be considered before the two sites are binned forever.
The Commission’s intervention followed hot on the heels of the £600,000 regulatory settlement with QuinnBet, announced eight days earlier.
What is Ready Steady Robo?
Holland Casino has a responsible gambling board, which includes scientists, experts with lived experience and their own RG executives. They meet with the board every few months to talk over current processes, and the board challenges the operator’s ideas and implementations, pushing them to do better.
“They challenge us both from an academic side and a more practical side. We try to develop our rules as we go along but you have to prove every single day that you’re doing all that you need to do on responsible gaming,” Petra notes.
The Netherlands online gambling market has been the subject of many column inches and much speculation thanks to regulation that has been largely described as heavy-handed and perhaps a little short-sighted – even by the country’s own regulator.
