Lithuania orders Polymarket blocked and tells payment providers to stop processing its transactions

Lithuania’s gambling regulator has taken action against Polymarket, calling the prediction market platform illegal gambling under local law and ordering it blocked in the jurisdiction. For PSPs and acquirers, the practical point is simple: the regulator is not only targeting access to the website, but also payment rails.

1. The Lithuanian Supervisory Authority said Polymarket is offering illegal gambling and is therefore breaching the country’s laws. Following a decision from the Regional Administrative Court, the regulator is now directing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to restrict access to the website.
2. The same order also reaches payments: the regulator has instructed payment providers to terminate all payment transactions with the operator. That is the bit high-risk payment teams will care about, because it turns a content-classification dispute into a processing restriction.
3. The authority said that although Polymarket presents itself as a “prediction market” where participants buy and sell their predictions of event outcomes, its investigation identified signs of gambling, specifically betting. In other words, the regulator says the label on the product does not change how it is treated.
4. This is the first time the Lithuanian gambling authority has moved against the prediction market sector. The action follows similar steps in Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, France and Denmark, which have also targeted Polymarket. Denmark recently did the same, and South Korea has also blocked the platform and referred 18 individuals to prosecutors for placing trades there.

For payment providers, the pattern matters more than the single country. Once regulators start pairing website blocking with payment shutdown orders, the compliance question shifts from “what does the merchant call the product?” to “does the local watchdog think this is gambling?” — and that is a much less forgiving test.