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Life is not easy for online casinos operators.  Just when they thought the major headache of online gambling prohibition in the United States was close to being lifted, they get very bad news from one of the biggest banks in the world.

The Royal Bank of Scotland has declared that it will no longer accept transactions from online casinos and online gambling sites.  The bank has officially cut off its services to the gaming industry.

The Royal Bank of Scotland has not refused all services to online casino operators in that online casinos may still maintain accounts with the bank, but the bank will no longer process transactions from online gambling activity.  Although some online gambling companies may chose to use two separate banks, most will probably change banks altogether.

The decision to stop processing payments from online casinos comes after pressure from the Swiss government to do just that.  The Royal Bank of Scotland has also recently merged with a major banking group in the Netherlands, ABN AMRO.

“What is seems like from the outside is that this was a decision that was made to both please the Swiss government, and to satisfy the demands of the merger,” said industry observer Keith Frans.

“At the end of the day, what the Swiss and Dutch governments are doing is trying to protect their gambling monopolies. I'm not sure these type of actions are going to work under European Union agreements.”

The Dutch have made strong efforts to stop the progress of online casinos and this is just the latest event in a series of similar activities.

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