Japan, Philippines mulling limits on locals in casinos

Legislators in both Japan and the Philippines are separately considering new limits on local residents’ ability to patronize local casinos.

This week, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported that the panel of civil servants advising the Japanese government’s development of secondary casino legislation had proposed using the nation’s new national identity card system to monitor Japanese citizens’ individual visits to the nation’s as-yet unbuilt integrated resorts.

The report suggested that requiring Japanese citizens to present their My Number identification cards to enter casinos would allow the government to cap the number of times any local resident is allowed to enter a casino within a given time period. The report indicated that the government plans to impose both weekly and monthly caps on casino entry, although how high each of those numbers would be has yet to be decided.

The card system will also allow casino operators to prohibit access by underage gamblers as well as problem gamblers who either self-exclude or have been excluded at their family’s request. The government is keen to show the public that it’s doing all it can to mitigate the potential negative aspects of casino gambling as it fine-tunes its regulatory regime.