Brazil’s finance minister says Lula wanted to end online betting, while 6.2 million are already blocked from bets

Dario Durigan used a radio interview on Friday, August 21, to set out the government’s line on online betting: tighter regulation, higher taxes, and a progressive squeeze on legal operators without driving traffic straight into the illegal market. For PSPs and acquirers, the useful bit is simple: Brazil is not talking about a clean ban, but the policy direction is clearly toward more restrictions and more control.

1. Durigan told Radio Metrópole in Bahia that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva does not like bets and, in his words, would have ended them if he could. Durigan said he feels similarly and argued that the government needs to build “a path of strictness” without encouraging the illegal market.
2. He blamed the current mess on years of weak oversight. Online betting was allowed in Brazil in 2018 under Michel Temer, but according to Durigan, a regulatory framework only arrived five years later, under Lula. In the meantime, the platforms operated “basically without any rules” until 2023.
3. By the time the current administration took over, Durigan said betting had already become embedded in Brazilian football, federations, advertising, radio, television, and Congress. That matters for payment providers because once a vertical has that kind of distribution footprint, rolling it back is harder than taxing and constraining it.
4. Durigan also broadened the critique beyond betting, describing an “regulatory anarchy” in other financial sectors and naming fintechs, Banco Master, Reag, and Operation Carbono Oculto, which is investigating a money laundering and tax evasion scheme linked to PCC.
5. On restrictions already in place, he gave two numbers. Five million people are currently blocked from accessing online betting, including Bolsa Família and Benefício de Prestação Continuada (BPC) beneficiaries, who are blocked by CPF, and participants in Desenrola, the government debt-renegotiation program, for whom the betting ban is a condition of entry. Add the 1.2 million who requested self-exclusion, and the total rises to 6.2 million Brazilians kept away from betting platforms.

For high-risk operators, Brazil’s message is not subtle: the market is already too large to be wished away, but the state is willing to use tax policy, access restrictions, and compliance pressure to reshape it. That is the part PSPs should be pricing into their risk decisions now, not after the next round of rules lands.