Brazil regulator targets banks and payment firms in illegal betting crackdown
The Secretariat of Prizes and Betting (SPA) published Ordinance No. 2,750, which establishes a new and more stringent national protocol to prevent, identify and combat financial transactions linked to the operation of illegal betting in Brazil.
The text replaces previous regulations and consolidates a surveillance system involving banks and payment institutions and payment arrangements.
The regulation stipulates that financial and payment institutions must block transactions involving unauthorised operators and monitor suspicious transaction patterns.
The ordinance defines transactions as: operations related to payments, receipts or transfers of funds, through any instrument, including payment transactions, that aim to directly or indirectly enable the irregular operation of fixed-odds betting.
The document defines that any individual or legal entity that operates betting without authorisation will be considered an “irregular operating agent”. The accounts of these agents may be blocked after the issuance of a report of irregularity, a document that formalises the infraction and initiates an administrative process for the possible forfeiture of funds to the federal government.
How should institutions act?
The ordinance lists dozens of situations that should raise red flags for financial institutions, such as:
- Repeated deposits of small values, typical of betting reloads
- Large volume of transfers coming from people with no commercial relationship with the recipient
- Successive use of new Pix keys, QR codes, or accounts after previous blocks
- Patterns inconsistent with the declared economic activity, such as newly opened companies receiving thousands of microtransactions
- Transactions involving intermediaries, such as payment gateways or individuals who transfer funds to illegal operators
If evidence is confirmed, institutions must report the case to SPA by the next business day.
Official list of authorised operators
To facilitate monitoring, the SPA maintains an updated list on its website with all companies authorised to operate. The list is available for consultation, download and integration via API, allowing banks to automate verifications.
After identifying irregularities, the SPA will send a blocking notice to the financial institutions, accompanied by a report of findings. From then on, the banks must:
- Block the accounts of the unauthorised operator, if any exist
- Prevent new transactions intended for illegal exploitation, even if the client has no direct relationship with the operator
- Inform users, when attempting to send money to blocked accounts that the transaction has been blocked by order of the SPA
The Central Bank will be informed of each notification for supervisory purposes.
Combatting fraud and money laundering
The decree stipulates that the SPA may share non-confidential data about suspected companies with financial institutions. The objective is to strengthen mechanisms for preventing fraud and money laundering.
With this decree, the federal government is creating a mandatory financial surveillance network, involving banks and fintech companies, to stifle the flow of money from illegal betting. The measure:
- Increases the ability to track clandestine operators
- Makes it more difficult to use intermediaries to mask transactions
- Standardises communication and blocking procedures
- Strengthens the administrative process of forfeiture, allowing seized assets to be returned to the federal government
In practice, this is one of the most comprehensive regulations ever issued to combat the illegal betting market in the country. The regulated sector had been requesting measures from the government to clamp down financially on illegal platforms, and this measure represents another step in that direction.
This regulatory effort is described in the SPA/MF Regulatory Agenda 2026–2027. The Agenda organises the SPA’s actions into phases and prioritises themes such as operator authorisation, operational integrity, risk prevention and advertising control.
As part of this scope, the SPA has already blocked 66,000 clandestine domains and removed thousands of irregular profiles on social networks.