EGBA’s European player safety standard EN 18144 is published after years of work

The European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) has released the final version of the European Standard on markers of harm in gambling, EN 18144. For operators and PSPs serving high-risk gaming merchants, the practical point is simple: this is now a formal baseline for safer-play monitoring, even if it remains voluntary.

1. The standard identifies nine core markers of harm that gambling providers can use to detect risky play patterns and trigger interventions. The list covers shifts in stake volume and frequency, speed and intensity of play, deposit frequency and size, withdrawals, player-initiated contact, gaming session durations, use of multiple gambling products, accumulated net losses and loss projections, plus interaction with safety tools such as deposit limits and self-exclusions.
2. EGBA Secretary General Maarten Haijer said the document is “an important milestone for player protection in Europe” and argued that, when widely adopted, it will support earlier identification of risky play and better protection for players. He also said EGBA members are already applying many parts of the standard and are aligning their European operations around it.
3. The work started in 2022, when EGBA brought the proposal to CEN. Since then, EGBA says it has worked with European operators, national authorities, academics and harm prevention specialists, with the standard approved in October 2025 by CEN and its participating national bodies before the final version was released this week.
4. For payment teams, the operational relevance is in the monitoring layer: deposit behaviour, withdrawals, session length, and self-exclusion interactions are all part of the marker set. That means payment data is not just an accounting feed anymore; it is part of the player-protection stack operators are expected to use alongside the rest of their controls.
5. CEN and EGBA are framing EN 18144 as a voluntary tool, not a mandatory rule. It is meant to complement existing national regulatory frameworks and sit alongside each European jurisdiction’s gambling laws, which means adoption will be driven by operators, their compliance teams and the expectations of local regulators rather than by one EU-wide legal mandate.