Indonesia’s gambling payments fall for the first time in nearly a decade as QRIS takes 88.6% of deposits in Q1 2026

Indonesia has recorded its first annual decline in online gambling transactions in almost 10 years, according to the country’s financial intelligence unit, PPATK. For high-risk PSPs, the more important signal is where the traffic moved: QRIS, Indonesia’s national QR system, now dominates gambling deposits, while bank transfers keep losing ground.

1. PPATK said deposits fell from IDR 51.3 trillion ($2.9 billion) in 2024 to IDR 36.01 trillion ($2 billion) in 2025. For Q1 2026, gambling transactions reached $2.2 billion and deposits were $519 million. That is the headline decline; the operational detail is that the market is still active, just changing shape.
2. The biggest shift is payment routing. PPATK said QRIS accounted for 88.6% of gambling deposits in Q1 2026, up from 78.5% for full-year 2025. Traditional bank transfers, meanwhile, are continuing to fade out of the mix. For PSPs and acquirers, that is the sort of distribution change that matters more than the aggregate volume number.
3. PPATK says operators are splitting payments into smaller, more frequent transactions to make detection harder. The methods cited include shell companies, fake merchant accounts, merchant aggregators, and fintech layers used to obscure fund movement. In practice, that means the usual high-risk playbook: not disappearance, but fragmentation.
4. The regulator has asked for a 2027 budget of $47.3 million, almost triple the current $15.5 million, to strengthen financial intelligence, IT systems, and international cooperation. Its stated priorities are money laundering investigations and illegal gambling.
5. PPATK also warned that deposits tend to rise ahead of major sporting events, with FIFA World Cup 2026 specifically mentioned, and said it has already seen schemes using QRIS and nominee accounts. For payment providers, that is a reminder that Indonesia’s risk profile is not just about enforcement, but about seasonal spikes and route switching under pressure.

The practical takeaway for high-risk payments teams is straightforward: Indonesia is showing how tighter supervision can shrink ticket sizes and reroute volume into QR and fintech rails without eliminating the underlying demand. If you touch the market, the question is no longer just whether you can process it, but whether your monitoring can keep up with how the flow is being broken up.