The cashless poker machines across New South Wales, Australia has been welcomed by anti-gambling advocates, despite concerns that gamblers using a pre-loaded card could lose the sense they were forking out "real" money.
The state government is proposing reforms that would require poker machine gamblers to register and pre-load money to a government-issued card, which would operate in a similar way to the cashless Opal cards for the public transport network.
The card would be linked to the state's exclusion register to prevent it from being used by thousands of self-excluded gamblers.
Senior cabinet minister Victor Dominello, who has responsibility for gambling, has crossbench support in the upper house for the proposed changes, including from the Greens and One Nation's Mark Latham, to ensure the new laws can pass.
Mr Dominello last week released draft harm minimization legislation for public consultation, which suggested facial recognition technology could be used to identify problem gamblers.
The gambling card was not included in the draft bill, but Mr Dominello has been consulting widely with his colleagues and MPs from all parties to shore up support for it.
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