Klarna, powered by its subsidiary Sofort, has allowed banks to extend its voluntary gambling blocks to open banking-driven payments, in a move it says is designed to protect UK consumers.
The update will see banks connected to Sofort be able to identify a payment request from a gambling or gaming company and, if there is a gambling block in place, block that payment, protecting their customers. The update code is available for banks and open banking providers to use.
Alex Marsh, Head of Klarna UK, commented: “We’re calling on banks and other open banking infrastructure providers to make this relatively small update which could help protect hundreds of thousands of UK consumers.
“Open banking has huge potential to increase competition and reduce costs and as adoption grows the industry must move quickly to make changes which can further improve the lives of UK consumers.”
First introduced in 2018 by Monzo, the gambling block helps customers control their use of gambling sites, however, whilst effective for payments made by card, before this announcement, opening banking powered payments were not often covered.
Klarna’s subsidiary Sofort became the first provider to integrate the UK’s first open banking powered gambling block, developed by Monzo and Truelayer last year, who made the update code public.
This will allow Monzo to extend their gambling block to all Klarna-powered, immediate bank-to-bank payments for Monzo’s UK customers.
