Indonesia’s OJK orders banks to freeze nearly 38,800 accounts tied to illegal iGaming

Indonesia’s Financial Services Authority (OJK) has told commercial banks to conduct enhanced checks and freeze about 38,796 accounts suspected of being used for illegal gambling. For PSPs and banking partners, the point is simple: the regulator is pushing banks to trace account ownership more aggressively, including national ID numbers and beneficial owners, to make account-churning harder.

1. OJK said the latest figure stands at 38,796 accounts, up from 38,379 previously. The updated list came from the Ministry of Communication and Digital Technologies (Komdigi), which supplied the new data used by the regulator.
2. Banks have been instructed to verify the national identification numbers (NIK) of account holders and close other accounts registered to the same individuals. OJK’s head of banking supervision said banks must also monitor beneficial owners, so illegal operators cannot keep moving activity into fresh accounts.
3. The measure is part of OJK’s broader anti-money laundering program and its effort to push illegal gambling out of the banking system. OJK is coordinating the work with other government agencies, which usually means the compliance burden does not stay neatly inside one institution.
4. The figures were disclosed at OJK’s monthly press conference on 5 October, alongside banking-sector results for August. Loan growth reached 13.65% year on year to Rp9178 trillion (about $577 billion), while investment loans rose 25.11% and bank BNPL grew 29.1% to Rp31.41 trillion (about $2 billion) across 34 million accounts.

For high-risk payment flows, Indonesia’s message is not subtle: if accounts are being used to move gambling-related funds, banks are expected to look through the wrapper, connect the dots across accounts, and act on the underlying person rather than the single MID, wallet, or bank account in front of them.