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Message: [QUOTE="Tero, post: 6232149, member: 415793"] It is a sad moment for online poker players and sports bettors in Finland. The plans that were [URL="https://www.cardschat.com/forum/poker-news-events-63/online-gambling-facing-obstacles-in-finland-466444/"]published over a year ago[/URL] have now taken another step. According to Finnish tabloid Iltalehti ([URL="https://www.iltalehti.fi/muutlajit/a/b7b7e4cc-8020-4963-a36e-2e5c3015d05d"]Finnish link[/URL]) The Parliament of Finland has approved the new Lottery Act on Tuesday December 14th. Starting from January 1st 2023 banks are required to block money transfers to selected game providers. The original Lottery Act proposal contained a demand to block also withdrawals but that turned out to be against the constitution so it was dropped. [B] How providers are selected?[/B] This is the part where things get interesting. In the future there will be a so called "black list" that is maintained by the National Police Board of Finland. A gambling site that actively markets its products to the Finnish market will be considered violating the new Lottery Act and that alone will probably be enough for a site to be put on the list. At this point it is unclear if the officials will only block the money transfers or will they also block access to these sites? However, if they blocked access to those sites, then this would make it impossible for individuals to withdraw their winnings, so I'm guessing that they can't do that without violating the constitution. [B]High costs involved[/B] The financial experts estimate that the creation of money transfer blocking mechanism will cost from 300k to 3 million euros for each banking group, and maintaining it will also require lot of resources. The Finance Finland ([URL="https://www.finanssiala.fi/en/columns/blocked-payments-are-a-costly-and-unreliable-way-to-prevent-gambling-problems/"]English link[/URL]) considers the blockages to be ineffective and too costly for the little benefits that they offer. [B] What now?[/B] As an individual I am waiting what will become of this. My biggest fear is that game providers will arrive to the conclusion that Finland is not worth the trouble and will exclude Finnish customers altogether. Hopefully it won't come to that... [/QUOTE]

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