Study Shows Australia’s Credit-Card Betting Ban Reduced Online Gambling Mainly by Adding Friction

New research suggests that Australia’s nationwide ban on using credit cards for online gambling has indeed curbed sports betting — but not because it restricted access to borrowed money.

Instead, the reduction appears to stem from the added inconvenience the policy introduced for bettors.

The study, conducted by economists Aditya Maitra and Matthew Maltman and published by the e61 Institute, examined anonymized bank-transaction data from before and after the federal government’s June 2024 ban. The legislation prohibited the use of credit cards for online wagering, though lotteries were excluded from the restrictions.

According to Maitra and Maltman, average expenditure on online sports betting among affected users dropped by roughly A$50 ($32.88) per fortnight during the six weeks following implementation. This decrease was primarily fueled by a 15-percent reduction in the likelihood of placing a wager at all, with approximately one-third of impacted customers ending all recorded gambling activity during the period.

However, the researchers were clear that the evidence does not indicate a genuine decline in gambling on credit. Instead, the ban created minor hurdles — such as requiring customers to register new payment methods — that discouraged casual or sporadic bettors. As they put it, “The results suggest the mechanism was inconvenience, not liquidity.”

The study emphasizes that gamblers still had the option to shift funds from a credit card into a bank account and gamble from there at essentially the same cost as before the ban. Yet very few chose to do so, and cash-advance fees in fact edged slightly downward, the analysis found.

Before the ban came into force, credit-card usage for online sports wagering was already dwindling. By early 2024, only about two percent of cardholders relied on their cards for betting, partly because such transactions were categorized as cash advances and thus incurred substantial fees and interest charges.

Maitra and Maltman also challenge common assumptions about the types of people using credit cards to gamble. Their findings show that these bettors typically had higher incomes and more substantial liquid savings than other gamblers, and they did not exhibit more pronounced indicators of financial distress.

While the ban prompted many low-stakes and occasional gamblers to step back from online wagering, its impact on heavier gamblers was muted. The immediate financial effects were also minimal: the authors reported no clear signs of improved savings behavior, spending patterns, or broader financial well-being in the short window following the policy’s rollout.

The research comes at a time when Canberra faces growing political pressure to address gambling-related harm in a country often cited as the world’s highest per-capita gambling nation. Surveys continue to show that poker machines, rather than sports betting, remain the dominant source of problem gambling.

Maitra and Maltman concluded that the credit-card prohibition illustrates how gambling behavior “is responsive to policy”, particularly when frictions disrupt spur-of-the-moment betting. Even so, they advised that if policymakers want to achieve deeper reductions in gambling harm, they may need to target the segments where risk is heavily concentrated. As they wrote, “Policymakers seeking to reduce harm may achieve greater impact by focusing on poker machines.”

By fLEXI tEAM