[intranation]

Disclaimer: I'm a Smarkets employee.

Well it's not entirely clear that it's just related to gambling - Betfair, the UK's largest betting exchange, do all their merchant transactions (customer deposits and withdrawals) through RBS as well - given they're directly linked to credit cards the risk of chargebacks etc. is clearly higher than a day-to-day business account that is mostly used to pay employee salaries (as presented in the article, Smarkets client funds are ring-fenced in a Maltese bank). The obvious difference to me is that Betfair is a multi-million pound company and Smarkets isn't.

[saurik]

Just because that's the "obvious" difference doesn't mean it is the correct one; in fact, it doesn't even mean there /is/ a difference. I am constantly involved in situations where people online are claiming something I know a lot of internal details about (whether it be my own company or some larger outfit where I happen to know people) "is unfair because Y does the same thing we do and isn't getting flak" when in fact Y actually is getting flak (but isn't complaining about it in public) or is really not doing quite the same thing.

Honestly, this is sufficiently and irritatingly common that unless you've talked to the people at Betfair and gotten them to agree with your story, I not only am going to have a hard time believing your take, I'm going to have a hard time not negatively judging your company for telling it like that. :(

[intranation]

I was specifically addressing the notion that gambling is risky or "low profile" (which I assume to be a synonym for shady) with regards to the "appetite for risk" reason stated by RBS in their letter.