Brazil orders betting operators to complete refunds by October 14 as pending balance reaches $30.5 million

Brazil has set October 14 as the deadline for betting operators and financial institutions to finish refunding players’ balances, with the pending amount now at $30.5 million across 22.5 million bettors. For PSPs and operators, the key detail is that the state is tying refunds to specific identification data — CPF, deposit account, and user-level amounts — and is prepared to move unreturned funds to Caixa Econômica Federal.

1. Brazil’s Secretariat of Social Communication of the Presidency (SECOM) said on Saturday, October 10, that the amount still pending refund to bettors totals $30.5 million. The figure comes from updated information submitted by the betting operators themselves.
2. The companies’ data covers 22.5 million bettors with pending balances across 70.5 million accounts. Until October 5, when the voluntary withdrawal window closed, the reported amount was about $230,000. The jump reflects the operators’ own updates while they were preparing the information needed for the refund process.
3. Brazil says 90% of the accounts have balances below $0.19, and 97% have less than $1.92 available for refund. In practice, that means the process is being driven by very small balances spread across a very large number of accounts.
4. Operators had until October 7 to provide financial institutions with the data needed to identify refund beneficiaries. The required fields include the amount attributable to each user, their tax ID number (CPF), and the bank account from which the deposits were made.
5. Eight companies still had not sent the information on their bettors’ remaining balances. Brazil’s Attorney General’s Office (AGU) will file a lawsuit to force delivery of the data and allow the funds to be returned. If there is any obstacle, the resources will go to Caixa Econômica Federal from October 14, and Caixa will be responsible for refunding bettors.

Brazil is also moving against illegal betting infrastructure. Between September 25 and October 9, authorities flagged 16,627 illegal websites for blocking, including 2,979 additional sites identified on October 8 and 9. The blocking effort involves Ciberlab, Sedigi, SPA, Anatel and CGI.br, while authorities also requested the removal of 3,691 pages, profiles, channels, groups and servers, including 1,974 Facebook pages, 560 Instagram profiles, and 1,027 Telegram channels and groups.