Brazil orders banks to block illegal betting payments
Brazil has significantly escalated its crackdown on illegal online betting, ordering banks and payment providers to identify transactions linked to unauthorised gambling operators and block flagged accounts within 24 hours.
The Ministry of Finance’s Secretariat of Prizes and Betting has set out the new requirements under Ordinance SPA/MF No. 2,750, which was published in Brazil’s Federal Official Gazette on September 14.
The rules formally bring banks, payment institutions and merchant acquirers into the government’s enforcement campaign against betting businesses operating outside Brazil’s regulated market.
ALSO READ: Top Brazilian gambling sites
Financial institutions will be required to establish monitoring systems capable of detecting transaction patterns potentially associated with illegal betting.
That includes recurring transaction amounts, sudden increases in transfers and financial activity inconsistent with a customer’s declared economic profile.
Payment descriptions and Pix receipts can also form part of the assessment, particularly where gambling-related terms such as bets, bonuses, prizes, withdrawals or reloads appear in transactions involving suspicious accounts.
Institutions will also be required to identify attempts to disguise gambling payments through intermediaries including payment gateways, credit facilitators and companies established to conceal the ultimate destination of player deposits.
Crucially, financial institutions must reject transactions directed towards betting businesses that do not appear on the SPA’s official list of authorised operators. Once the regulator issues a formal notice identifying an irregular operator, associated financial institutions will have 24 hours to block the affected accounts.
Money frozen during the process could ultimately be forfeited to Brazil’s Federal Treasury if the operator is unable to establish that the funds were obtained legally.
The move represents another significant tightening of Brazil’s regulated betting market, which launched nationally on January 1, 2025.
Rather than relying solely on website blocking and enforcement against individual operators, the government is increasingly attempting to cut illegal sportsbooks off from the Brazilian financial system.
