Finnish Bank Offers Online Gaming to Customers
Veikkaus, the Finnish Lottery, and Nordea Bank recently launched a partnership that will enable all of Nordea's customers who use its Solo online banking to play the lottery or keno through the Solo site.
According to Veikkaus, people who use the Solo OnNet banking service do not need to register separately to play the online games. Nor do they need to set money aside in a separate gaming account. Gamers can use funds directly from their bank account to pay for the games. Winnings are credited directly back to the customer's bank account.
The Veikkaus OnNet Internet gambling system has more than 220,000 registered users and receives weekly sales of more than 1.3 million euros. Internet gaming makes up more than 6 percent of its total sales.
The program will begin a trial run Oct. 15 and will begin permanently on Nov. 12. Approximately 1.2 million Finnish people are expected to be eligible to use the system.
Nordea, a world leader in Internet banking, is a financial services group in the Nordic and Baltic Sea region. It has 3.1 million e-commerce customers.
Greek Lottery Meets WLA Security Standards
Instant Lottery SA, a Greek lottery company, received certification from the World Lottery Association in September.
It is the eighth licensed lottery to gain certification to the WLA Security Control Standards. The other licensed lotteries are Norsk Tipping in Norway; Oy Veikkaus in Finland; Dansk Tipstjeneste in Denmark; Eesti Loto in Estonia; NordwestLotto in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany; Svenska Spel in Sweden; and Toto-Lotto Niedersachsen GmbH of Lower Saxony, Germany.
The security control standards are one way for the lottery industry to offer insurance to layers and governments that the lottery has a risk management structure and an effective physical and procedural security system.
The list of 108 security standards and 12 lottery-specific standards will be published this year.
South African Religious Leaders Oppose Daily Draw
Uthingo, the operator of the national lottery in South Africa, has attracted the wrath of the nation's religious leaders.
The National Religious Leaders' Forum released a statement recently that noted that most of the people who support the organization are against gambling. Uthingo is planning to launch a daily drawing in November.
"Even those who regard this (gambling) as a human weakness we should tolerate will agree that it should not be stimulated to excess. Daily draws are such excess and they should not be allowed," said the group's chairman, Ashwin Trikamjee.
The religious group has members from all of the country's major faiths, including Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and African traditional groups.
The possibility of a daily lottery drawing is also drawing fire from the Congress of South African Trade Union, which says that there are already too many lotteries in the country as well as too many other opportunities to gamble.
"These have been made possible not only by government policy over the last eight years, but a generally licentious attitude and a 'quick-cash' morality that is destroying the very fabric of our communities. Even the single weekly lottery spelt bad news for poor people. A daily draw will now virtually take the food right out of the mouths of poor families," the group said.
Camelot Floats Idea of Pan-European Lottery
British and French lottery operators say there will be a pan-European lottery game within the next two years.
Camelot, which operates the U.K. lottery, has participated in talks with a number of other European lottery operators bout the possibility of an all-European game. The game would not be intended to replace the member countries' national lotteries, Camelot said.
"We're encouraged by the progress we've made in discussions with the National Lottery Commission on a lottery game which would be played across several European nations," Camelot said. "We are optimistic we can overcome the obstacles that still remain and bring the game to market sometime in 2004, subject to the usual regulatory approvals."