Brazil blocks 2.8 million Bolsa Família and BPC recipients from online betting accounts

The Ministry of Finance has blocked access for 2.8 million beneficiaries of Bolsa Família and the Benefício de Prestação Continuada (BPC) to online sports betting platforms, following a Supreme Federal Court (STF) order barring the use of social program funds for gambling. For PSPs and betting operators, the practical point is simple: Brazil is now enforcing beneficiary checks by CPF through Sigap, and licensed operators are expected to run those checks every two weeks.

1. The 2.8 million blocked users represent 10.4% of all beneficiaries covered by Bolsa Família and BPC, and 11.2% of the 25 million Brazilians who tried to bet at least once in 2025, according to the Finance Ministry. The broader restriction covers all 27 million beneficiaries of the two programs: they are barred from registering on betting platforms, but only those who already had accounts had access actually removed.
2. The control mechanism runs through Sigap, the Sistema de Gestão de Apostas operated by Serpro. Betting operators can query the system using CPF to see whether a user is a beneficiary of the social programs. In the ministry’s wording, the check returns a clear “impedido” or “não impedido.”
3. The law also prohibits betting by other categories: public officials working in the sector, professional athletes, referees, sports executives, inspectors, technicians, and people diagnosed with ludopathy. Here’s the catch: for these groups there is no automated block, so the ban relies on self-declaration rather than a system-level check.
4. More than 925,000 people have voluntarily signed up for the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting (SPA) self-exclusion platform, which sits under the Ministry of Finance. The tool lets any citizen restrict access to all betting houses authorized by the secretariat for a fixed period or indefinitely; in the latter case, the user can revisit the decision only after 12 months.
5. Industry groups point to one obvious gap: the blocking regime does not reach clandestine sites, meaning operators outside the SPA licensing framework remain outside the self-exclusion system as well. These sites do not follow advertising conduct rules, do not pay the R$ 30 million authorization fee required by the government, and do not collect taxes.

For high-risk operators and their payment partners, this is the kind of compliance regime that matters less as a headline than as a recurring operational task: identity matching by CPF, scheduled user-base checks, and a clear split between licensed and unlicensed supply. The paperwork is now part of the product.