Wrong Customer Details Left Palmerbet BetStop Account Open for 17 Months

BetStop is Australia’s national self-exclusion register for licensed online and phone betting services. Once a customer registers, bookmakers must identify the account and close it as soon as reasonably possible.

ACMA’s investigation into Palmerbet found that the bookmaker regularly checked this customer against BetStop, but the details sent with those checks did not match the person’s registration.

BetStop checks can use information such as a customer’s name, date of birth, contact details and postcode. The rules tell bookmakers to use the customer’s full legal name as it appears on an Australian government identity document.

Palmerbet was using a shortened first name instead, and it also had the wrong date of birth recorded for the customer.

ACMA tested what would have happened with the correct information, and came to the conclusion that the customer would have returned a positive BetStop match. Therefore, the speed of the register itself was not the problem. ACMA says a check for a single customer takes an average of just 0.003 seconds.

The customer joined Palmerbet in August 2018 and went through an identity check the following year. That check verified the person’s first initial, surname and address, but not their date of birth.

Palmerbet’s records also showed another clue. The customer had previously supplied a telephone bill showing their full first name, while the betting account contained the shortened version.

ACMA said Palmerbet should have resolved that difference before relying on the shorter name for its BetStop checks.

Palmerbet told the regulator that its earlier identity checks met the anti-money-laundering requirements that applied at the time. ACMA’s response was straightforward: passing those checks did not remove Palmerbet’s separate responsibility to use accurate information for BetStop.

Palmerbet had actually changed its identity process shortly before BetStop launched. From July 2023, new customers also had to have their date of birth verified. Older accounts were not all put through the same process.

The customer in this case was one of those older account holders. ACMA said Palmerbet knew that information stored on older accounts could create problems when matching customers against BetStop.

In March 2024, the regulator also reminded betting companies that they needed to use a customer’s full legal first name rather than a nickname or shortened version. The account remained open for almost another year.

The customer started betting through Palmerbet again in December 2024. Between then and 22 February 2025, Palmerbet accepted 312 bets across 18 separate days, according to ACMA’s announcement.

That resulted in 18 breaches for providing a wagering service to someone registered with BetStop. The figure is 18 rather than 312 because the law counts each day on which the customer was allowed to bet, rather than counting every individual bet as a separate breach.

Then, on 22 February, Palmerbet finally received a positive BetStop match. Its automated system closed the account immediately.

That detail helps explain where it failed. Palmerbet’s system was capable of shutting the account as soon as it identified the customer. For almost 17 months, the information being used for the checks prevented that match from happening.

Palmerbet first checked the customer against BetStop on 6 September 2023, four days after the customer had registered.

ACMA concluded that the account could reasonably have been closed by the following day if Palmerbet had used the correct information. Instead, it remained open until February 2025.

Because the requirement to close the account continued for every day it stayed open, ACMA recorded another 535 breaches. Combined with the 18 days on which betting took place, the investigation found 553 contraventions connected with this customer.

The regulator did not find that Palmerbet had broken the separate rules covering marketing to self-excluded customers.

ACMA has accepted an 18-month court-enforceable undertaking from Palmerbet instead of ending the case with the investigation alone.

Palmerbet must bring in an independent consultant to review how its BetStop checks work, identify problems and recommend changes. The bookmaker will then have to act on those recommendations.

Palmerbet has also refunded all deposits the customer made between registering with BetStop and the account finally being closed.

The case came down to a basic data problem. Palmerbet was checking the register, and its system could close an account automatically once it found a match. But the wrong date of birth and shortened first name meant the system couldn’t find the right customer.