Mercado Pago’s “friends’ tournaments” for World Cup betting draw regulatory scrutiny in Argentina

Mercado Pago’s Fixture 2026 has turned the old office-and-friends World Cup pool into a tech product: more than 2.3 million users had uploaded more than 60 million first-round predictions by June 5. For payments companies, the interesting part is not the football; it is the line between a social betting tool and an unauthorized gambling operator.

1. Argentina’s Asociación de Loterías, Quinielas y Casinos Estatales (ALEA), which brings together the provincial gambling regulators, sent a formal notice to Mercado Libre S.R.L. saying the wallet’s “friends’ tournaments” could be treated as a betting-capture system under Article 301 bis of the Criminal Code. That article sets prison penalties for operating, administering, or organizing any gambling-capture scheme without the relevant authorization.
2. ALEA described Fixture 2026 as an “unauthorized promotional operation” and warned about the “regulatory and criminal risk” for Mercado Libre. It also asked the company, led by Marcos Galperin, to bring the contest into line with the applicable legal framework in each province, since provincial authorities are the ones empowered to regulate and supervise gambling of any kind.
3. According to sector sources cited by Infobae, Mercado Libre did not formally answer ALEA’s letter, but it did change some of the contest’s terms. In the “friends’ tournaments,” the wagered amount is not debited from users’ accounts; instead, it is converted into a “reserve” for settlement when the winner is paid, so the app does not handle the funds directly and the money circulates only between players.
4. Even with those changes, the notice may be only the first step. Sector sources expect further actions against the company. For high-risk PSPs, that is the practical point: if a product looks like a payment flow but is functionally facilitating wagers, regulators may treat it as gambling infrastructure rather than a harmless promotional feature.

Mercado Pago presented the contest as a “free competition,” with daily prizes of $20 million for each match day and a USD 50,000 prize for the overall ranking winner. The rules also say Mercado Pago’s role is limited to providing a technological tool, which is exactly the kind of phrasing regulators tend to read very carefully when money, prizes, and betting mechanics end up in the same product.