Dutch gambling regulator warns operators over barriers to closing player accounts

Licensed gambling companies in the Netherlands have been making it unnecessarily difficult for some customers to shut down their accounts, prompting the country’s regulator to spell out how operators are expected to handle players who want to leave.

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The Dutch Gambling Authority, the Kansspelautoriteit, published new guidance after finding that not every licensed operator was complying properly with the rules governing account closures. The intervention focuses on a straightforward principle: a customer who decides to stop gambling should be able to close an account without being pushed through additional hurdles.

The regulator’s findings suggest that this has not always happened in practice.

Customer service cannot become a barrier

Some gambling companies have required customers to contact support before an account can be terminated. That kind of procedure can turn what should be a simple exit into another interaction with the operator, and the KSA has made clear that such an extra step should not be imposed.

There is another boundary around those conversations. When a customer independently approaches customer service or uses a chat function to request closure, the interaction cannot be turned into an attempt to persuade that person to continue gambling. The request is supposed to lead toward closing the account, rather than becoming a retention opportunity for the operator.

That distinction matters in an industry where the commercial incentive to retain an active customer can collide with safeguards intended to give gamblers control over when they stop.

Remaining balances must be returned

The guidance also deals with money left behind in an account. Operators are expected to return any remaining balance without unnecessary delay.

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They cannot attach additional conditions that effectively stand between the customer and the funds still held in the account. Closing a gambling account should not create a separate struggle to recover the money remaining in it.

KSA targets how the rules work in practice

The regulator’s move is notable because it does not introduce the basic right to close an account. Instead, the KSA is responding to the way existing requirements have been implemented by parts of the licensed market.

Its position is that practices encountered among operators were unacceptable and that the additional guidance should remove uncertainty about what a compliant closure process looks like.

For licensed gambling businesses, the message is consequently less about drafting another policy document than about the mechanics customers actually encounter when trying to leave. A closure process cannot be designed around delay, mandatory contact with support or efforts to keep a departing player active.

And once the account is closed, money remaining inside it still belongs in the hands of the customer — without an obstacle course on the way out.

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Source: kansspelautoriteit.nl