Ombudsman Orders Santander to Refund Customer's Gambling Losses After Ineffective Card Blocks

^{A Santander UK branch in Eastbourne. The Financial Ombudsman Service found the bank's blocks did not cover the account a customer used to gamble. (Photo: David Hillas / Wikimedia Commons)}

The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has told Santander UK to refund a customer's gambling losses and pay him £500 in compensation, after finding the bank's gambling blocks did not cover the account he used. The final decision, reference DRN-6513712, is now published on the ombudsman's website and was reported by The Telegraph on 4 November.

The ruling matters beyond one customer. It sets out where the ombudsman thinks a bank's duty starts once a customer says plainly that they cannot control their gambling, and it turns on payments to overseas casinos that were not coded as gambling.

What Happened to Mr R

The complainant, identified only as Mr R, received about £25,000 from the sale of a house on 18 July 2025. By 15 August he had spent around £16,000 of it on gambling. He had gambling blocks on his accounts, but they did not work because the payments went to overseas companies through payment intermediaries that did not use the merchant code for gambling.

On 15 August 2025 Mr R told Santander he had a severe gambling addiction and mental health problems. The bank blocked international transactions and, after a second call on 21 August, put a full online block on his basic account. That block was not applied to the top-up card account he was gambling from, and it stayed unblocked until 1 October.

The Ombudsman's Reasoning

Ombudsman Ray Lawley accepted that, before 15 August, Santander could not have been expected to stop the payments unilaterally, and that banks are not expected to police the legality of overseas gambling firms. After the calls, he found the position changed. In the decision, he wrote that 'a reasonable response would have been to make it clear that only an online block would have prevented the transactions'.

Santander argued that the blocks were customer-led support measures, that Mr R had removed a gambling block in October 2025, and that it was speculative to say further blocks would have worked. The ombudsman did not accept this. He said there was no evidence Mr R gambled again once the correct blocks were in place, and noted he had re-applied the block later that month.

Mr R 'expressly told the advisers he was experiencing financial harm and mental health problems from compulsive spending, and asked for help', the ombudsman wrote.

What Santander Must Do

Santander must refund all of Mr R's identifiable gambling losses, less any winnings, from 15 August 2025 up to and including 17 September 2025, the date he referred his complaint to the FOS. It must add 8% interest on each transaction from the date incurred until payment, and pay £500 for distress and inconvenience. The investigator had originally proposed £300.

The decision came with a deadline of 12 October 2026 for Mr R to accept or reject it, which suggests it was issued before that date. The FOS publishes final decisions after the fact, so the ruling is new to the public record even though the underlying case dates from 2025.

FOS decisions are binding on the firm only if the customer accepts them, and they do not set legal precedent. They do show how the ombudsman applies its approach to similar complaints, and banks that offer gambling blocks will want to check that those blocks cover every account a customer holds. The same pressure is building on operators, with the UK Gambling Commission having announced new rules aimed at empowering consumers and enforcing self-exclusion obligations through fines.