Not upheld: Service failures generally complaint against Monzo Bank Limited

Decision detail

Summary

Mr B complained that Monzo's gambling block failed to prevent him from gambling and that Monzo did not provide adequate support despite his disclosure of gambling addiction in May 2025, resulting in losses exceeding £80,000. Monzo explained that its gambling block only prevents card payments to merchants with correct gambling category codes and cannot prevent faster payments or transactions to overseas operators. The ombudsman found that Monzo did offer proactive support including gambling blocks, wellbeing team assistance, and other tools, but Mr B did not engage with or take up these offers. The ombudsman concluded that Monzo acted fairly and within banking requirements, and that it could not reasonably be expected to prevent authorised payments or to overcome Mr B's pattern of circumventing restrictions through alternative payment methods.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman acknowledged Monzo's obligation to offer proactive support to vulnerable consumers and found that Monzo did attempt to do so through offering gambling blocks, wellbeing team support, manual merchant blocking, custom spending blocks, and signposting to support organisations. However, the ombudsman concluded that Mr B either rejected these offers or did not engage with them. The ombudsman found that gambling blocks have inherent technical limitations—they only work on card payments to merchants with correct gambling category codes, and cannot prevent faster payments or transactions to overseas operators using different codes. The ombudsman reasoned that even if Monzo had intervened further, Mr B had already demonstrated a pattern of adjusting payment methods to circumvent restrictions, making further intervention unlikely to be effective. The ombudsman emphasised that banks cannot stop authorised debit payments and that it is ultimately the customer's responsibility to prevent harmful gambling.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website