It’s easy to be cynical about Barclays' launch of a function allowing customers to stop themselves from spending at five types of outlet. If you can switch off, you can always switch on again. So is there any real point?
Actually there is.
Payment systems have advanced rapidly in recent years. Cards have overtaken cash, which is in long term decline. Contactless payment has arrived. So has payment via mobile phone while PayPal style online wallets are in widespread use. All have been designed with convenience in mind. Their aim is to make the consumer’s life easy, and in many ways that’s welcome. But perhaps they’ve made it too easy.
Handing over cash makes an exchange feel much more real than paying via a card or a mobile or an online wallet for goods, or services. Or for bets.
The problem this causes, the ease with which people forget how much they’ve chucked down the toilet, is at its most acute with the latter. The recent, welcome, efforts to tighten regulation have primarily been aimed at betting shops and their fixed odds betting terminals, along with advertising. Online has attracted less attention.
Barclays’ move has the potential to help address that imbalance, given the importance of cards to the latter.
The app based service, that I'm told will be extended to Barclaycard holders and can be used by telephone and bank branch customers too, affords users the opportunity to stop and think before making a payment.
That could prove powerful, and not just when it comes to gambling. It works for other forms of spending too, hence the addition of petrol stations, restaurants and pubs, premium rate websites and phone lines, and supermarkets to the list of things people can block.
Over spending is destructive, particularly at this time of year. It’s all the more dangerous when fuelled by borrowing.
A recent report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation put the number of Britons in poverty at 14.3m. In less of a jam are the JAMS - those who are Just About Managing. But debt fuelled overspending can easily push them through the poverty trapdoor.
The ‘spend stopper’ - although it’s not officially called that - could help prevent that. It has been broadly welcomed by organisations such as the Money Advice Trust, and it is to be hoped that the other big banks now follow Barclays’ lead. Some online outfits are already there.
Personal financial management is not one of this country’s strong suits, so the development of a tool like this counts as a thoroughly good thing.
It is quite true that you can lead a horse to water but you can make it drink. A hardcore gambler, for example, could install the service, block gambling sites, take a moment to have a think about it, and then unblock them.
But at least it’s there for people who are willing to use it.
