Brazil excludes poker from its iGaming ban, PokerStars says

PokerStars says poker has been left out of Brazil’s iGaming ban because the country classifies it as a game of skill rather than an online gambling product. For PSPs and acquirers, the useful bit is simple: payment treatment can hinge on how a vertical is defined, not just on whether it looks like gambling from the outside.

1. PokerStars said poker is excluded from Brazil’s iGaming prohibition because Brazilian rules treat poker as a game of skill. That classification matters for payments teams, because a product that sits outside the gambling bucket may face a different risk review, different merchant coding decisions, and a different conversation with banks.
2. The source does not give more detail on the scope of the ban, the effective date, or any payment-processing implications beyond the classification itself. For operators, that means the key operational question is not “is it gambling in the abstract?” but “how does this jurisdiction classify the product for licensing and acquiring purposes?”
3. The update came via iGaming PUSH, which framed the point around Brazil’s treatment of poker versus online gambling. For high-risk providers, that is the kind of local legal distinction that can decide whether a line of business stays open, gets ring-fenced, or gets cut off by a bank that does not want to guess.