Week in Review: MiCA, Piastrix Exit, Kazakhstan Crackdowns, and Turkey’s SEPA Move

The first week of July brought a familiar mix for high-risk payments: regulators tightening the screws, infrastructure players disappearing, and brands still finding ways to get money moving through the gaps. For PSPs, the useful bit is not the headline noise but the pattern underneath it: licensing, banking access, and distribution are getting harder to fake.

1. Since 1 July, the MiCA filter has effectively sorted the crypto market in the EU. Besides Binance, Bitget, MEXC, Bitfinex, and HTX were left out, and fewer than 20% of 1,200+ companies received full authorization. The regulator has done what it set out to do: remove smaller players and firms not prepared for long-term compliance, even if users still keep transacting with unlicensed exchanges.
2. Piastrix is shutting down without giving a reason. From 15 July, top-ups stop; from 30 July, customer accounts will be fully blocked. For iGaming operators in the CIS segment, that is not just another brand leaving the market — it is the loss of a key payment gateway, after QIWI and ЮMoney.
3. Kazakhstan blocked 402,000 payments worth 10 billion tenge ($20.8 million) over the first half of the year. Authorities opened 15 criminal cases and detained 11 top fintech managers for aiding grey platforms. The Unified Betting Accounting System identified 433,000 users, which gives regulators a much clearer map of who is actually moving money through the sector.
4. Polymarket came under fire from the Wall Street Journal after reporting said the platform paid bloggers $2-3 thousand/month to post fake wins on clone sites. The gap between the $900 thousand it claimed and the real $166 thousand came to 5.4x. After the investigation, the clone sites were removed.
5. On the sponsorship side, 1xBet signed Conor McGregor as an ambassador, while also pushing the “King is Back” line around a possible UFC comeback. Separately, Everton renewed its deal with Stake despite a warning from the UKGC, with the logo moved to the sleeve after the Premier League banned bookmaker branding on the front of shirts.

Two more details matter for payments teams watching the regulatory map. Turkey has agreed to join SEPA, which would be the largest expansion of the zone in its history, but the process will take years because local legislation still has to be aligned with EU directives. And 1xBet launched 1xCare, a responsible gaming center split into four tracks: Research Hub, EduCare, TechShield, and player support. That is the kind of packaging brands often use when they want to look more comfortable in regulated jurisdictions.