BLIK will block illegal gambling transactions in Poland from September 1

The Polish mobile payment provider is adding an automated check against the Ministry of Finance’s register of illegal gambling sites. For high-risk PSPs, the useful bit is simple: if the domain is on the list, the payment gets declined.

1. From September 1, BLIK will block payments linked to domains listed in Poland’s Ministry of Finance’s register of illegal gambling sites. The block applies to transactions connected to operators both inside Poland and abroad.
2. Monika Król, Vice President of BLIK, told the Polish state news agency PAP that the company introduced “an additional mechanism to block transactions conducted by entities that are illegal under Polish law.” In practice, BLIK now checks the domain attached to each transaction against the register and declines the payment if there is a match.
3. BLIK says the register currently contains more than 55,000 domains, with about 700 new entries added monthly. That matters operationally: the payment block is only as good as the list it is checking against, and this one is not a static file sitting in a drawer.
4. The company is one of Poland’s most widely used payment systems, processing 2.9bn transactions worth PLN 441.5bn (€102bn) in 2025. It also joined a pan-European initiative earlier this year to connect national payment systems and enable cross-border transfers between platforms.
5. Poland has kept most online gambling under a state monopoly since 2017, with sports betting and promotional lotteries exempt. The grey market has shrunk: unlicensed operators accounted for an estimated 29.1 per cent of the market in 2024, down from 58.6 per cent in 2017.

The timing is also worth noting. BLIK’s move lands while the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) is running a new round of social responsibility checks on bookmakers in Poland, including Fortuna, STS, Superbet, Bukmachers, E-toto Bukmachers and LV Bet. UOKiK says the review will cover websites, mobile apps, customer terms and conditions, and the use of artificial intelligence systems to spot possible dark patterns.