Not upheld: failure to protect vulnerable consumer from gambling harm and refusal to raise chargebacks complaint against NewDay Ltd trading as Fluid Credit Card

Decision detail

Summary

Miss A, a GamStop-registered consumer, made gambling transactions between July and August 2025 using a NewDay credit card. The transactions were processed through unfamiliar merchant names using non-gambling MCC codes to disguise their true nature. Miss A disputed the payments and requested chargebacks, claiming she had not received goods or services from the named merchants and had not received gambling winnings. NewDay refused to raise chargebacks. The ombudsman found that NewDay was unaware of Miss A's GamStop registration and vulnerabilities at the time, could not have identified the gambling nature of the transactions, and was not obligated to raise chargebacks because Mastercard rules explicitly exclude gambling payments from chargeback protection. The complaint was not upheld.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman found that NewDay could not have identified the transactions as gambling-related at the time they were made due to disguised merchant names and MCC codes. Critically, under Mastercard rules, payments for gambling are excluded from chargeback rights, meaning any chargeback raised would have been unsuccessful. Therefore, NewDay was not obligated to raise chargebacks and did not act wrongly in refusing to do so. Although Miss A received gambling credits as intended, Mastercard rules do not permit chargebacks for gambling disputes regarding withdrawal of funds.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website