The crime commission demanded action. Gamblers called their bluff

Most people who signed up for a trial of cashless gambling at Wests Newcastle rarely used the technology, preferring to gamble with cash or prepaid tickets and using their physical loyalty cards.

The evaluation of a pilot study into a cashless gambling technology designed by poker machine manufacturer Aristocrat found fewer than 20 of the 260 participants used the new system all the time, citing privacy concerns, lack of incentive, or not being able to use their preferred machine.

Most participants in a trial of cashless gaming preferred to keep using the old technology.Credit: Jason South

Cashless gaming was a key recommendation of an inquiry by the NSW Crime Commission into money laundering in pubs and clubs which found billions of dollars in dirty money was being ploughed through the state’s poker machines.

The Wests Newcastle trial, conducted between October 2022 and June 2023 and evaluated by University of Adelaide gambling researcher Paul Delfabbro, resulted from an invitation by the state government to gambling machine manufacturers to test out cashless gambling technology.

Aristocrat developed a smartphone app that accepted banking funds, which were transferred into a digital wallet and interfaced with poker machines through Bluetooth technology. The app included voluntary responsible gambling features such as limit-setting and allowed players to accrue loyalty points using their physical cards simultaneously.

About 70 per cent of participants reported using the technology some or half the time.

“The trial ... highlighted the challenge of running trials in contexts where people have access to another legacy system and where they have opportunities to gamble on trial machines, but also others located at the same, or different, venues,” the evaluation reported.

“The most common reason for not using it appeared to be general satisfaction with the default system.”

The evaluation found that participants were generally supportive of the responsible gambling features, such as setting their own spending limits, but did not use them because most people did not perceive themselves as having a problem with gambling. Only 10 people used the limit-setting feature, and therefore, little could be inferred about its efficacy.

The NSW government is currently rolling out its own trial on 4500 machines across 28 venues to test whether cashless gambling would be feasible “without unduly impacting the industry, while also minimising gambling harm and money laundering risks.” The trial will operate under a hybrid model that allows the poker machines with the technology installed to accept cash as well.

Gambling Reform Alliance chief executive Carol Bennett said the Wests trial was designed by industry to test a product and was not useful to evaluate whether cashless technology reduced harmful gambling or money laundering. The government trial suffered from the same limitation in that it was also voluntary, she said.

“The government didn’t need to do this trial. There was a NSW Crime Commission report which recommended the introduction of a cashless card with mandatory and binding default limits as a matter of priority, to reduce gambling harms, criminal activity and money laundering.”

Deakin University Research Fellow Anna Thomas said previous studies showed that implementing technology on a voluntary basis can be of limited value for assessing whether they reduced or increased harmful gambling generally.

“If it’s voluntary, people may not use it, or may not use it consistently,” Thomas said. “It makes it very difficult to get a really good picture about whether it’s working and if people are spending more money or less money.”

A spokeswoman for Liquor and Gaming NSW said the Wests Newcastle trial was designed to assess how cashless gaming solutions operated in real-world conditions, and the results had been forwarded to the panel overseeing the government trial.

“The Newcastle trial was one small trial in one venue on limited machines,” she said. “The majority of hotels and clubs in the expanded trial will have every machine in their venue operating the cashless technology.”

The NSW government has separately reduced the cash input limit for poker machines from $5000 to $500, mandated responsible gambling officers in venues with more than 20 machines, banned external signage for gaming rooms and banned political donations from clubs involved with gambling. It was contacted to comment on the value of its trial.