India’s payment companies are now in the firing line as gaming probes widen

India’s crackdown on online gaming and betting has moved past the operators themselves. Regulators and law enforcement are now looking at the payment layer — PSPs, mass payout services, fintech firms, and intermediaries that move money for gaming-linked businesses.

1. In the last few months, authorities in India have expanded their scrutiny of the online gaming and betting sector to payment infrastructure. The cases now mention payment companies, mass payout services, fintech firms, and intermediaries, with allegations covering shell companies, forged documents, payments for betting and gambling projects, and schemes to move funds and launder proceeds.
2. The timeline shows how quickly the net widened. In summer 2025, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) froze assets of the gaming platform Probo worth more than 284 crore rupees over allegations of illegal betting, and later attached additional assets worth 117 crore. After the ban on real-money games, the checks spread to larger market players, including WinZO and Dream11. In WinZO’s case, investigators also alleged bot use to manipulate gameplay.
3. By February 2026, the Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) said it had uncovered a network of online gaming and payment companies worth about 5,000 crore rupees. Wegofin, a fintech company tied to the gaming industry, was at the center of that probe. A few weeks later, Fino Payments Bank CEO Rishi Gupta was arrested, with the case linked to the review of transactions around Wegofin and the gaming infrastructure.
4. In April, DGGI scrutiny reached several technology and payment firms at once, including RUGR Fintech, IppoPay, and Decentro. That same month, Neokred co-founders were taken into custody. Investigators say payments for illegal gaming projects moved through a network of payment companies, banks, and intermediaries.
5. In May, the ED arrested three Gameskraft founders and froze more than 526 crore rupees in company assets. The agency accuses the company of fraud, bot use, and money laundering. Separately, the ED also accused Pay10 Services, one of India’s first licensed payment aggregators, of a possible role in a large money-laundering scheme.

The tax side adds another layer. India’s Supreme Court upheld the 28% tax on real-money gaming, including for past periods, which opened the door to multi-billion-rupee tax claims against market participants. For PSPs and acquiring teams, the message is plain: in India, payment rails used by gaming-linked merchants are no longer being treated as neutral plumbing.