Let me start by saying I know I am the one in control of what I do and my actions but I have had a gambling addiction for over 2 years now and Monzo offer the gambling restrictions on your transactions. Unfortunately I was able to gamble some of my wages tonight and I am very disappointed in myself and a little upset Monzo feature didn’t work. The feature I moved over to this bank for. They cam up as groceries in the category section.
As I understand it, Monzo’s gambling block works by preventing payments identified as ‘gambling’ based on the transaction’s category code. If the merchant sells groceries and processes all payments as groceries, Monzo wouldn’t pick up on any gambling payments from that merchant.
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Hi Ian
Welcome to the community, albeit not on the happiest of terms
It sounds like the organisation you gambled with were playing pretty fast and loose with things as, as @teakitkeat just said, they should really be setting the MCC value to indicate a gambling activity
If it would not add insult to injury, and if you are comfortable doing so, would you care to “name and shame” them?
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Message monzo in app, and they can look into it and possibly block it from happening again.
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Good advice 
. At the very least, assuming a mistake rather than malfeasance on behalf of the merchant, there might be a chance that 
can persuade them to correct the MCC value
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Unless it was something like the national lottery bought in store. They can’t do anything about that
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I was thinking that, or scratch cards. Anything bought in a supermarket is going to show up as “Groceries”.
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These were casino websites online.
If an online casino website has fudged the MCC, then I believe they are in breach of MasterCard rules. Monzo cannot be held responsible for that?
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I put the post on so other people are aware that the gambling tool does not work for every site. Not to blame Monzo or anyone else. I am to blame for my demons and didn’t post to get anything in return.
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Hi there … i would get in touch with Monzo as Barclays have the same feature now and my friend went to them and Barclays managed to sort it out and now there Blocked
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Hi Ian,
I’m sorry the gambling block wasn’t effective this time. It’s a “best effort” feature, which - as others have mentioned - uses Mastercard’s Merchant Category Code (MCC) classification to identify companies that offer gambling. Most companies respect this - and Mastercard are good at enforcing it - but unfortunately new websites are sometimes misclassified 
We do maintain our own “block list” when we see these cases, so we can help Monzo customers without waiting for Mastercard to take action. If you haven’t already, you can let our support team know which transaction this was and we’ll add the merchant to our list. We typically update the list about once a week.
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Gambling block never worked for most sites for me either
Do you want to contribute to the discussion by explaining who this happened with? Then something can done. Stating “me too” helps nobody.
Besides, gambling block won’t work if you’re withdrawing cash…
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Sadly I’ve faced issues myself with this and due to it not working I sadly lost around 2 grand.
I’ve noticed when you pay using PayPal or shrill with a connected Monzo card it goes through their was a famous British one however I believe this site got patched and another one is these new ones such as RooBet
I have a list but unsure if I’m allowed to say it due to incase any gambling addicts like myself see it.
Luckily I used GamStop yesterday so I’m banned for 5 years
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If both yourself and @JonH are amenable, perhaps you could DM him the list?
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Some interesting discussion here around how this feature is applied, which got me thinking…
Given the issue of surprise mechanics and the potential they will soon be considered gambling in the U.K. does anyone know how this sort of feature would work in relation to those?
Loot boxes are often purchased with in game currencies, that you buy from the same store you buy the games on, along with various other kinds of in app purchases. Would Monzo even be able to intervene here, without blocking the ability to buy games at all? Do Monzo have a plan for this? Or working on getting ahead of the ball to protect their customers from these mechanics before regulations catch up?
I think it’s an interesting area to look at.
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