I got an email this morning from the Business Advisor I spoke to at Barclays asking whether I’d made a decision regarding my new bank account.
It gave me a bit of a kick up the ass, as I realised opening a bank account was supposed to be a quick thing, and I’d been letting it drag on. I went back over my notes, had a look at a few websites again and decided to go with HSBC.
The guy I’d spoken to was friendly, I liked the fact that there was a type of account which was specifically designed for online businesses … and there was a branch five minutes down the road from me, which would prove handy if I needed to chat to anyone face to face.
I sent an email to the guy I’d met with there asking about next steps and he got back to me fairly quickly saying that I could pop in and see him the next day … or I could just set it up online seeing as I was only going to be registering as a Sole Trader.
Feeling fairly motivated to get things sorted, I decided to apply online and filled in a quick form. When I submitted it, I was told I would need to wait for a phone call from HSBC staff before my account could be finalised.
Sure enough, within half an hour I had a phone call and a guy on the other end asking me for some more information about my business.
As soon as I mentioned “online gaming” or “gambling” though, there was a pause and things changed slightly.
I’d thought about how to play this, as a couple of the banks I’d spoken to about this had seen a little wary of online gambling.
I had initially described it as “Online Marketing”, but when pushed about what I was going to be marketing I decided to tell the truth. This was my business after all – I wanted it to run in a transparent and trustful manner, so getting it off the ground with a big fat lie didn’t seem right. Especially to my bank.
When the guy on the other end of the line had got his breath back, he asked me for the URL of a site that I planned to use and I gave him the address of Play Poker Online.
He put me on hold for five minutes.
When he came back, he regretted to inform me that they wouldn’t be able to open the account as they couldn’t “condone that sort of business”.
I honestly didn’t know what to say. Condone?! This is affiliate marketing … not under age girls running guns across state borders while whizzed off their tits.
The fact that I’d be working with “honourable companies” such as Full Tilt (ahem) and Pokerstars (cough) made no difference. Nor did my insistence that no gambling actually took place on my site.
Apparently, marketing online gaming is just too big a risk for some banks to take. They fear all sorts of underhand activities such as fraud and money laundering (although why this should just be limited to online gaming I don’t understand).
I ended up getting back to my computer and rather taking my frustration out on my Barclays Business Manager who had initially contacted me at the beginning of the day.
Having already been forced to cross HSBC off my list, I wrote back with the URL of my site telling him to have a look through it and get back to me with whether it’s the sort of thing that Barclays could “condone” as I didn’t want any problems once the account was launched.
He still hasn’t got back to me …
