Cambodia will suspend all online gambling in casinos from October 2026 and tighten casino licensing reviews

Cambodia has confirmed that all online gambling activity in the country’s casinos will be suspended from October 2026, with license revocation on the table for operators that keep running it. For PSPs and banking partners, the real signal is that Cambodia is moving from a broad anti-fraud campaign to a formal licensing filter that will decide who gets to stay in the market.

1. Vice Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sar Sokha said casinos that continue online gambling after the suspension takes effect will face license revocation and other legal penalties. The government says the measure is aimed at cutting links between casinos, cyber-fraud networks, and illicit money flows that have been using legal gambling infrastructure as cover.
2. At the same time, the Cambodia Commercial Gambling Management Commission (CGMC) is building a formal suitability review for casino license renewals. The draft framework was reviewed on 4 September at a meeting chaired by Secretary General Yeth Vinel, marking the clearest step yet toward a more structured regime since the anti-scam campaign began.
3. The proposed “integrity and quality” framework will set minimum conditions operators must meet both to keep and to obtain a license. In practice, renewal would stop being a box-ticking exercise and become a substantive review of financial strength, internal controls, and compliance history. The CGMC has not yet published scoring criteria or an official implementation date.
4. The regulatory push follows an August campaign reported by state news agency AKP, under which Cambodian authorities inspected 195 licensed casinos nationwide. That sweep led to 20 license revocations, 29 suspensions, and 23 additional permits expiring automatically, which gives a sense of how quickly the market is being compressed.

For high-risk payment providers, the takeaway is straightforward: Cambodia is not only restricting a specific product line, it is also tightening the gate for who can hold a casino license at all. That makes licensing status, merchant monitoring, and the ability to unwind exposure fast more important than usual.