Santander told to refund gambling losses in offshore payments case
The Financial Ombudsman Service has ordered Santander to repay gambling losses incurred via offshore operators, exposing gaps in bank payment blocks that only cover Gambling Commission-licensed firms.
Santander must refund gambling losses to a customer who continued betting with offshore operators despite having payment blocks in place, the Financial Ombudsman Service has ruled in a decision reported by SBC News.
The complainant, identified only as Mr R, received £25,000 from a house sale and went on to spend most of it gambling. No fixed refund sum has been set, but Santander must repay all identifiable gambling losses, minus winnings, between 15 August and 17 September 2025.
That window excludes roughly £16,000 Mr R spent before 15 August, the date he told Santander he was suffering a severe gambling addiction. The Ombudsman found the bank had no grounds to intervene before that disclosure, and that responsibility for setting restrictions beforehand lay with the customer himself.
Santander has also been ordered to add 8% interest to each transaction made in the disputed period and pay £500 in compensation for the distress caused.
The case turns on a gap in how bank gambling blocks work. These tools, offered by every major UK bank, are designed to stop payments to gambling businesses, but they only apply to companies licensed by the Gambling Commission. Mr R's spending after the house sale went entirely to offshore operators outside that regime, and SBC News reports he said he was able to keep gambling even after Santander set up an international block.
Gambling Commission data cited by SBC News suggests gamblers scoring eight or more on the Problem Gambling Severity Index, a threshold Mr R would likely have met, are the group most likely to use offshore platforms. Tackling the payment routes that sustain the unlicensed market is one focus of the government's Illegal Gambling Taskforce, established earlier this year.
Bank gambling blocks originated with Starling and Monzo in 2018 and were subsequently encouraged by the Gambling Commission and GambleAware, which co-authored guidance with the University of Bristol on how the services should work. Santander introduced its own block in mid-2019.
Researchers have since pressed the Financial Conduct Authority to standardise the blocks across banks, after finding some allowed customers to switch the feature off instantly. The FCA has endorsed the blocks as good practice but has not mandated a universal 48-hour cooling-off period for deactivation, and no further guidance has been issued since 2022.
Santander had argued it bore no liability, maintaining that transacting with offshore platforms was Mr R's own decision. The Ombudsman rejected that position, noting the purpose of a gambling block is precisely to protect vulnerable customers from this kind of harm. The ruling leaves open a broader question for regulators and banks alike over how individual responsibility should be weighed against institutional duty of care in problem gambling cases.