Brazil tells 37 fintechs to stop processing payments for 160 unlicensed betting sites

Brazil’s Finance Ministry has put payment infrastructure in the crosshairs of its anti-illegal-gambling push. By the end of August, 37 fintech companies must stop servicing 160 unlicensed sportsbook operators, or face account freezes, fund seizures, and financial liability.

1. The ministry says those 37 fintechs were processing transactions for 160 unlicensed betting sites. The instruction is not a polite suggestion: by the end of August, they must stop working with those clients, with account blocking, frozen funds, and financial responsibility on the table.
2. The thing is, Brazil has already gone after the supply side in the usual way. Authorities say they have blocked around 54,000 domains linked to illegal gambling, and that still has not been enough. By their estimate, 41-51% of betting platforms used by Brazilians are still operating without a license.
3. So the regulator is changing the target from domains to money. The new mechanism is set out in Decree 13.033 and Ordinance 1.766/2026: banks and payment providers must block transactions from flagged operators within 24 hours of an official notice. If a provider keeps processing after that window, it becomes jointly liable for the operator’s unpaid taxes.
4. The tax exposure is spelled out in the source: corporate income tax, PIS/COFINS, and contributions to the Ministry of Health. Robinson Barreirinhas, a representative of the Finance Ministry, put it bluntly: if a fintech processes payments for an illegal operator, the taxes that operator failed to pay will be collected from the fintech itself.
5. For PSPs, this is the shift that matters. The risk is no longer limited to losing a single merchant account. The processing business itself is now under pressure, with actual financial liability rather than a reputational bruise. In practice, that means tighter KYC/KYB, mass offboarding of gray clients, and fewer local payment partners willing to touch high-risk verticals.

Brazil is turning into one of the first major markets where the regulator is moving control from the operator to the payment chain itself — from the bank to the PSP. For high-risk payment teams, that is the part to watch, because it is the kind of enforcement model other jurisdictions tend to copy once it starts working.