The rapid expansion of Brazil’s online betting market attracted both licensed operators and a growing number of offshore casino websites. Despite multiple regulatory efforts, unauthorized platforms managed for years to reach Brazilian users by exploiting financial and digital loopholes. One of the key tools enabling this activity was Pix — the country’s leading instant payment system.
According to the Central Bank’s 2024 Payment Methods Report, Pix processed over 7 million monthly transactions. While its efficiency improved access to digital payments nationwide, the same feature made it the preferred channel for illegal casinos operating from tax havens. Research by ENV Media indicated that offshore operators continued to capture traffic and payments that should have gone to licensed sites, resulting in substantial tax losses for Brazil’s regulated market.
A Market Once Undermined by Offshore Operators
Following the mandatory migration to the bet.br domain in 2024, licensed platforms experienced a 79% drop in organic Google traffic. The search engine’s algorithm limited results to two per query while failing to block hacked or cloned URLs, effectively increasing the visibility of illegal .com domains. As a result, users searching for casino or betting content were redirected to unlicensed operators, causing monthly losses of more than R$575,000 for leading legal platforms.
By early 2025, these dynamics had cost Brazil’s licensed betting sector around R$350 million in lost revenue and taxes. The issue revealed the persistence of offshore operators and the challenges of controlling payment systems in an increasingly digital and decentralized environment.
The Importance of Fast and Secure Payments
According to a major Brazilian licensed online casino, payment efficiency and security remain top priorities for players and operators alike. The company recently upgraded its payment infrastructure, reducing the average deposit time from two minutes to under one minute, while maintaining near-instant withdrawals.
The online casino also analyzed data from thousands of successful transactions on its Brazilian platform and found that players overwhelmingly favored Pix — one of the most successful fintech solutions developed in Brazil. This preference highlights the importance of speed, safety, and reliability in digital payments.
Survey results showed that 74% of respondents ranked Security as the most important factor in online transactions. Speed followed closely, with 47% considering it highly important and 42% rating it as the top priority. Meanwhile, 48% valued Convenience as the most important element when choosing a payment method, and 42% emphasized Transaction Fees as a key consideration.
Why Payment Blocking Became a Turning Point
DNS blocking had long been Brazil’s main regulatory response. By March 2025, ANATEL had shut down more than 12,500 illegal sites — a 263% increase compared to October 2024. However, as each domain was blocked, others quickly appeared, often hosted in jurisdictions like Curaçao where gambling oversight was minimal.
Learning from mature markets, Brazilian regulators began examining global practices that combined domain restrictions with financial controls. In the United States, the Federal Reserve System introduced payment blocking in 2006, requiring banks to suspend transactions linked to unlicensed operators. Similarly, in 2022, France’s National Gambling Authority (ANJ) gained powers to enforce payment blocks, cutting off illegal casinos at their financial roots.
These cases demonstrated that blocking transactions could be as impactful as blocking websites. Extending Central Bank oversight to monitor Pix payments in Brazil proved to be a decisive move to weaken offshore gambling operations.
The Central Bank’s Role in Strengthening Regulation
By late 2025, the Central Bank had intensified its efforts to secure Pix transactions. It began excluding irregular accounts from the system and monitoring suspicious transfers more closely. Extending these controls to block payments associated with unauthorized gambling sites helped disrupt one of the key financial channels sustaining offshore operators.
Blocking Pix payments to unlicensed platforms also created practical obstacles for users. To continue depositing funds, they would have needed to open foreign accounts — an inconvenient and often unviable process. Cooperation with global payment services such as PayPal, Google Pay, and Apple Pay further reinforced the regulatory framework, ensuring consistent enforcement across multiple platforms.
Alongside payment blocking, Brazilian authorities expanded enforcement across digital platforms. In early 2025, the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting (SPA) carried out 75 inspections, 51 of which targeted influencers promoting unlicensed operators. The Ministry of Sport, through the National Secretariat for Sports Betting and Economic Development (SNAED), ordered the suspension of more than 70 YouTube accounts and channels advertising false winnings to large audiences.
While these measures increased compliance, regulators recognized that long-term success would depend on an integrated strategy. Public blocklists — such as those used in Cyprus — were identified as effective tools for transparency, allowing users to understand why sites were blocked instead of encountering blank “404” error pages.
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Ryan Terrey
As Director of Marketing at The Entourage, Ryan Terrey is primarily focused on driving growth for companies through lead generation strategies. With a strong background in SEO/SEM, PPC and CRO from working in Sympli and InfoTrack, Ryan not only helps The Entourage brand grow and reach our target audience through campaigns that are creative, insightful and analytically driven, but also that of our 6, 7 and 8 figure members' audiences too.
