Gambling disorder, a serious addiction with direct payment and risk implications in Argentina

Gambling disorder is not framed here as a moral failure but as a mental illness and behavioural addiction that affects adults, children, and adolescents alike. For high-risk payment providers, the important part is the market context: Argentina’s online gambling and betting sector is already material in size, still carries high informality, and is drawing in younger users through digital products that blur gaming and wagering.

1. Since 2013, the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-5 has placed pathological gambling in the same category as cocaine or alcohol addiction. The World Health Organization has done the same in the ICD-11. The source describes this as a severe neurobiological disorder in which the brain’s reward system is hijacked by intermittent bursts of dopamine.
2. Globally, 448.000.000 adults are said to suffer from risky gambling, and close to 80 million from severe gambling disorder. In online gambling environments, the reported rates are 15.8% for risky gambling among adults in online casinos and slots, rising to 26.4% among adolescents. In online sports betting, the figures are 8.9% for adults and 16.3% for young people.
3. Argentina’s online gambling and betting market is estimated to move 1.720.000.000 million dollars by 2026, with a base of approximately 4.500.000 users or bettors. The source also notes major challenges from high informality in the sector, which matters for PSPs assessing merchant quality, source-of-funds controls, and exposure to weakly regulated flows.
4. The market is projected to grow at more than 8% annually in revenue and to exceed 6.000.000 players by 2029. For payment teams, that combination of growth and informality is the part that tends to show up later in chargeback, compliance, and onboarding problems.
5. The most sensitive issue in the source is minors. It says the line between traditional video games and real-money betting has largely disappeared, and that thousands of children are using mobile devices while confusing entertainment with gambling for money. Debates in 2024 to 2026 cited surveys indicating that more than one in four secondary school students admitted to betting money in the last year, with teachers reporting cases of students borrowing money from classmates, selling the computer they use for school, or hacking a parent’s bank or e-wallet account at night.

The payment angle is pretty straightforward: where gambling products are reaching minors, informal merchants are common, and digital wallets or bank accounts are being accessed through family devices, the merchant risk profile stops being a theoretical exercise and becomes an operational one.