Dominican Republic lawmakers approve 10-year freeze on new betting shop licences

The Dominican Republic’s Chamber of Deputies has approved a draft measure that would block new licences for betting shops for 10 years. For PSPs, acquirers, and banks serving gaming, the important part is not the headline freeze itself but the cleanup plan behind it: the state is trying to bring a sprawling, hard-to-supervise retail betting market back under control.

1. The freeze is set out in article 191 of the bill and is tied to an institutional diagnosis that says the rapid growth of betting establishments has become one of the main supervision problems for the sector.
2. According to the figures cited in the proposal, the Dominican Republic has more than 71,000 lottery shops and sports agencies registered with the Directorate of Casinos and Gambling. The legislative diagnosis says that number has grown faster than the capacity of the agencies responsible for oversight and enforcement.
3. The text also draws a line between retail betting and tourist casinos: casinos operating in four-star or higher tourist hotels would be exempt from the ban on new openings. So the restriction is aimed at the large universe of lottery shops and sports betting outlets, not the hotel-casino segment.
4. The government’s plan is not just to stop new licences. It also includes a regularisation process for outlets that already operate or appear in official records, with goals that include cleaning up the commercial register, validating registered operations, and strengthening control mechanisms.
5. Another piece that matters for payment flows is digital oversight. The bill seeks deeper monitoring through the interconnection of point-of-sale locations with the tax systems of the Dirección General de Impuestos Internos (DGII), which would give authorities better visibility into operations and tax compliance.

The draft also includes a fiscal amnesty mechanism for operators with outstanding tax debts or unresolved issues: article 192 authorises the regulator and the ministry to apply it, but only under the conditions set by the regularisation process. In other words, the message is clear enough for the market: no expansion first, paperwork and controls first.