Home	Tutorial	Online Casino Reviews	Best Online Casinos	Casino Software	Casino News

Online Casino Gambling --- Casino News

Norway Blocking Online Casinos Too

The Norwegian government has announced and passed a new law that will effectively fly in the face of all that the European Commission has been trying to accomplish over the past several years. Norway’s new Payment Act is a piece of legislation that passed through into law last week by Royal Assent and now mandates that Norwegian banks and the financial services sectors block payments from all foreign licensed online casinos. The Payment Act is very similar in essence to the failed US legislation that was quite unable to effectively block all online casino gambling transactions. Interestingly, the law blatantly violates the trade commitments and regulations within the European Union and yet Norwegian officials still passed this Act into law.

The online casino gambling industry and financial services sectors have not had a big reaction to the Payment Act however, because they apparently have plans to simply ignore this latest piece of legislation and will still process all internet gambling transactions regardless of licensing country. To that end, the foreign online casinos are keeping a close eye on the developments, but are not yet worried. The CEO of Betsson released a statement that the betting and gambling group does not anticipate that the Payment Act will have any real and noticeable affect on the company.

One area of note is that although the European Commission’s attempts to create a fair and open online casino gambling industry throughout the EU does not expressly apply to Norway (since the country is not a part of the EU), Norway does have obligations to comply with market and trade restrictions because it operates and enjoys benefits as a part of the European Economic Area.