San Juan is drafting an online betting platform to fight clandestine sites

San Juan’s Caja de Acción Social is working on the technical rules for a possible legal online betting system in the province. For PSPs and operators, the point is simple: the province is trying to replace unregulated web wagering with a controlled channel that can be audited and restricted to adults.

1. Juan Pablo Medina, president of the Caja de Acción Social, said a regulated platform would make it possible to control and audit internet betting and would make it harder for minors to access it. He also said the province sees clandestine sites as the main problem it is trying to address.
2. Medina said it is “practically impossible” to block all illegal platforms, so San Juan should have an official offer aimed exclusively at adults. He said the online environment creates a different risk profile from land-based casinos, which have entry controls that make underage access harder.
3. The future system would include permanent monitoring, 24-hour audits, and technology intended to keep minors out. Among the tools mentioned were biometric checks, which is the kind of control high-risk operators will recognize immediately: the policy goal is less about stopping every bad actor and more about making abuse harder at the point of entry.
4. According to Medina, San Juan’s provincial gambling law already has its reglamentary decree published and in force. The Caja is now finishing the technical regulation that will set the operating conditions for licensed operators, and it still has to prepare the relevant bidding documents.
5. There is no final decision yet on whether the system will actually go live. Medina said that decision will rest with Governor Marcelo Orrego. He also said that part of the money generated by the system could be directed to a new line of loans.

The broader context matters: Medina said the expansion of online casinos and betting, especially after the pandemic, forced San Juan to build its rules from scratch. For payment providers, that usually means a market in the making rather than a market already settled, with the usual tension between official licensing, fraud controls, and the persistence of offshore or clandestine traffic.