If you lost £600 at an online casino last month and you want to deposit again, the site may ask a credit reference agency about you before it takes your next £50. That request is a routine part of the licence, and it says nothing about whether you have a gambling problem. It is the financial risk check the UK Gambling Commission ordered, and operators have run it on live accounts since 30 August 2024.
The regulator split the check into two tiers, and most people never meet either one. The first is a light-touch check that operators run once your net losses reach about £500 in a rolling month. Net loss means deposits minus withdrawals, so a player who puts in £700 and takes £400 back out sits below the line. The second tier is a detailed check, and it starts when your net losses hit £1,000 inside 24 hours or £2,000 across 90 days. Someone on a large salary who loses a large sum still trips the first tier, and that gap between the tiers sits at the centre of the argument the industry keeps making.
A light-touch check pulls limited data from credit reference agencies. It shows the operator public markers such as county court judgments and insolvency records. It does not show your bank balance, your salary or what you spend with other companies. It leaves no mark on your credit score, and no lender sees it. The Commission has repeated that point since the pilot phase, because players kept reading the word credit and assuming the worst.
A detailed check goes further. The operator asks you for documents: payslips, bank statements, a letter from your employer, sometimes a statement from a savings account. You upload them through the same portal you used for identity verification, and a compliance team reviews them by hand.
The two thresholds in plain numbers
Light-touch check: about £500 of net losses in a rolling month.
Detailed check: £1,000 of net losses in 24 hours, or £2,000 across 90 days.
Plenty of players never meet a check at all. Deposit £200 a month, lose it, and no provider gets asked a question about you. The tiers track losses rather than stakes, so a player who bets big on short-priced favourites in a sportsbook and finishes the month level stays outside the system. Casinos and bookmakers apply the same thresholds, which is why the checks turn up across the licensed market rather than at a handful of sites.
A light-touch check clears in seconds and your deposit goes through as normal. A block appears when the data provider cannot confirm your circumstances, and when the record has a gap, the operator moves you into the detailed tier. Your deposit then pauses for a day or two while someone reads your documents. The licence obligations do not bend around brand size. Whether you play at a household name or a smaller outfit such as CryptoLeo casino, the question at the deposit stage follows the same script: how much are you losing, and can you afford it?
Proof of income is the document operators ask for most, because the licence tells them to judge affordability instead of assuming it. If you work for an employer, three months of payslips settles the question in most cases. Self-employed players have a harder time of it. Two years of accounts, a tax return and a bank statement showing regular trading income give a compliance team enough to work with. Freelancers who draw a small salary and take the rest as dividends should send both records, since a compliance officer reading the payslip line on its own misses most of the picture.
Bonuses sit under the same conditions. A welcome offer carrying a 40x wagering requirement asks you to stake forty times the bonus before anything from it becomes withdrawable. Free spins carry their own terms, and some operators cap the maximum you can win from them. Read how wagering requirements work before you claim an offer, because the small print decides whether the bonus is worth the deposit behind it. A 40x term on a £10 bonus asks for £400 of stakes. The same term on a £200 bonus asks for £8,000. The multiplier is the same and the money you have to risk is not close.
Deposits run on debit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, open banking transfers through providers such as Trustly, and Paysafecard for players who would rather not hand over bank details. Credit cards stopped working for gambling deposits in April 2020, when the Commission banned them across the licensed market. The licence requires operators to return your money to the method you funded with, so a PayPal deposit comes back to PayPal and a debit card deposit returns to that card. E-wallets clear fastest, debit cards take a day or two, and bank transfers can stretch past three working days when a weekend sits in the middle.
Verification slows the first withdrawal on any new account. Operators must confirm your name, address and date of birth before they release funds, and they check source of funds on larger wins. Send the documents before you request the withdrawal and the money moves without a second pause.
Deposit limits sit on every UKGC-licensed account, and you set them yourself in the account settings. A lower limit takes effect straight away, and a rise waits 24 hours, which gives you time to change your mind. Session reminders, reality checks, time-outs of 24 hours to six weeks and full account closure all come with the licence. GamStop removes you from every licensed operator in the country for a minimum of six months, and you cannot undo it early. GamCare runs a helpline and a live chat service, and BeGambleAware funds treatment across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Trade bodies have argued since the consultation that the checks cost operators hundreds of millions and push players toward unlicensed sites that ignore every rule in the book. The Commission answered by trimming its first proposal. It dropped the plan to run detailed checks on anyone losing £1,000 a year, a threshold that would have caught ordinary punters, and settled on the two-tier structure now in force.
Unlicensed operators run none of this. They take your deposit in seconds, they do not check whether you can afford it, and they sit outside GamStop, so a self-exclusion you set on a licensed site has no effect there. You pay for that protection with a slower deposit screen.
The pilot covering the biggest operators ran from the end of August 2024, and the full rollout across the licensed market arrived at the end of February 2025. Expect the thresholds to move again. The Commission reviews them against inflation and against the data it collects from operators, and it has said it will tighten the detailed tier if the evidence supports it.
Ask the operator which tier triggered the pause and what documents would clear it. That request goes to the compliance team, and a customer service agent reading from a script will not know the answer, so ask in writing through the message centre. Supply the documents in one go rather than in pieces. If the process drags past a week, ask for a time-out on the account so the pause does not sit there tempting you while you wait. A deposit limit set below the level that triggered the check keeps the same thing from happening next month.
None of this makes for a smooth evening. The checks add friction to a deposit that used to take four seconds, and the Commission knows it. The trade-off it picked is a short pause for the many against unrestricted losses for the few. Where you land comes down to the numbers above.
GamCare runs a free helpline on 0808 8020 133, open 24 hours a day. BeGambleAware offers confidential advice at begambleaware.org.