Klarna’s open banking arm integrates Monzo’s gambling block

In 2018 Monzo demonstrated the innovative power of neo banking by quickly building a feature that allows users to block themselves from using gambling websites in a bid to combat addiction to betting. All other banks followed.

Monzo’s voluntary gambling block was only effective for card payments, however, and so it developed another open banking feature which did the same thing for account to account payments with Truelayer.

Klarna’s subsidiary Sofort has now integrated the open banking powered gambling block, developed by Monzo and Truelayer last year, who made the update code public so all payments facilitated by Sofort, are covered.

This will allow Monzo to extend their gambling block to all Klarna-powered, immediate bank-to-bank payments for Monzo’s UK customers. Currently, 400,000 Monzo customers have activated the gambling block.   

Klarna Kosma, its open banking aggregator and Sofort, its direct bank-to-bank payment methods, connects to some online gambling and gaming sites but none of Klarna’s BNPL or other credit products can be used on gambling or gaming sites. 

“We’re calling on banks and other open banking infrastructure providers to make this relatively small update which could help protect hundreds of thousands of UK consumers. Open banking has huge potential to increase competition and reduce costs and as adoption grows the industry must move quickly to make changes which can further improve the lives of UK consumers,” said Alex Marsh, Head of Klarna UK.