UK Gambling Commission Publishes Initial Open Banking Study on Unlicensed Gambling Payments

The UK Gambling Commission released its first open banking study in November 2026, and the findings pull together anonymized banking transaction records with linked survey responses to track payments toward suspected illegal gambling operators across a broad dataset spanning 2018 to 2026.

Study Methodology and Scope

Researchers examined millions of transactions from roughly 38,000 individuals who consented to share their data, then matched those records against survey responses that captured self-reported gambling behavior and problem gambling indicators measured through the Problem Gambling Severity Index; this approach allowed the team to isolate repeated payments to unlicensed sites while maintaining full anonymity throughout the process.

Key Transaction Patterns Identified

Among the 122 people flagged for repeated transactions with suspected illegal operators, 91 percent also conducted activity with licensed gambling firms during the same period, and licensed spending showed no substantial sustained reduction following an individual's first detected payment to an unlicensed site; the data indicates that participants often maintained parallel engagement rather than shifting away from regulated platforms entirely.

Observers note that the overlap between licensed and unlicensed activity suggests users may treat illegal sites as supplementary options rather than replacements, while the elevated PGSI scores among the unlicensed cohort point to a concentrated risk profile that regulators can now examine through objective payment trails instead of relying solely on self-reported surveys.

Broader Context of the Analysis

The Gambling Commission conducted this work as its initial foray into open banking techniques, and the resulting report details how transaction patterns were screened against known indicators of unlicensed operations; because the study covers multiple years, it captures both pre- and post-pandemic shifts in online gambling volume while still focusing strictly on the consented subset of account holders.

Further breakdowns reveal that the 122 repeat users represent a small fraction of the overall sample yet account for a disproportionate share of detected unlicensed activity, and the absence of a lasting drop in licensed transactions after the first illegal payment underscores the persistence of dual usage across the observed timeframe.

Implications for Regulatory Monitoring

Regulators now possess transaction-level evidence that links specific payment behaviors to survey-measured outcomes, which opens avenues for more targeted monitoring without expanding data collection beyond the anonymized framework already employed; the study also demonstrates that open banking records can surface activity that traditional reporting channels might miss, particularly when individuals split their spending between licensed and unlicensed providers.

Conclusion

The November 2026 release establishes a baseline dataset that future analyses can build upon, and the core statistics—122 repeat users, 91 percent dual activity, unchanged licensed volumes, and the 45 percent versus 6 percent PGSI split—stand as the primary factual outputs from this first application of open banking methods to illegal gambling detection in the UK market.