Five financial institutions and ten payment systems enable the operation of 2,645 illegal betting websites. These platforms operate outside the list of the Ministry of Treasury and the portals taken down by Anatel, as requested by the government.
Celcoin leads, operating for 1,075 sites, followed by Voluti with 835, Fitbank with 362, Microcash with 224 and Iugu with 146.
They all present themselves as financial services platforms and not as traditional banks, as the Central Bank’s requirements are more stringent.
List of illegal betting websites sent to Anatel
According to Folha, Voluti, Microcash and Fitbank state that they do not operate directly with betting sites, but with payment systems contracted by these platforms.
The five companies guarantee to follow federal regulations and, after listing more than 2,000 banned websites, they contacted partners to cease relations with the listed websites. New lists were sent to the National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel) in recent weeks.
According to the Folha article, the ten systems most cited as intermediaries are Ako Pago (292), Onepay (268), Zam Pago (266), ABC Tech (205), Golden Pig (198), Luckgame (177), HKPay (159), Zalka (138), Logame do Brasil (125) and New Pay (116). Of these, eight have been in operation for less than five months.
The process between the bettor’s money and the company involves several entities, including game developers and hosting platforms. Payment systems are essential intermediaries between finance and websites.
ABRAJOGO survey
ABRAJOGO carried out a survey through social networks and transfer tests to identify the banks and payment systems involved. In addition to the five main institutions, there are another 19 operating on a smaller scale.
Continuous monitoring seeks, firstly, to identify new cases. However, the Ministry of Treasury did not respond to the media outlet’s questions about the situation. For industry associations, it is essential to attack the financial infrastructure that supports illegal websites.
André Lins, legal director of Adeja (Association in Defense of Games and Betting), summarizes: “The financial part is the only way to materialize their activity in Brazil. They make the whole system out there, but to get the money they need local institutions and that’s the point they need to attack. There is no point in blocking websites, we have to create mechanisms to block access to money.”
According to him, the division between financial institutions and payment systems serves to outsource responsibilities. “They create these mechanisms so that, when they reach one of them, they can say that their part is just generating the Pix. The other says just receive the Pix. We have to criminalize the collection of Pix by an unauthorized company”, he explained.
The president of the ABRAJOGO board, Alessandro Valente, lists three fronts for the fight against illegal websites: “The fight against payments is the most important, the government has to go after banks and payment methods.
Next, there is the media that promotes it, the influencers. The domain [on the internet] is the last and least important, [because] within 30 minutes [after being taken down] the illegal website creates another one”, he concluded.
