Brazil Shuts Pix, TED and Boleto to Betting and Orders Sites Redirected as the Licensed Market Goes Dark

Three Central Bank resolutions write the betting ban into the rulebooks of Brazil's main payment rails, and a Finance Ministry ordinance gives operators until Wednesday to hand over every player's balance. The tool for clawing back Pix payments to illegal sites still does not exist, and the government page licensed sites are told to point to was not live on Monday morning.

• Brazil's Central Bank has amended the rules for TED transfers, boletos and Pix to bar participants from processing, settling or enabling fixed-odds betting transactions, in Resolutions BCB 595, 596 and 597 adopted on 30 September and published on 2 October
• The resolutions add scheme-by-scheme duties to the general order the bank issued on 28 September; the boleto rule has no exception for refunds, and the system for rejecting and returning Pix transfers to illegal operators has still not been issued
• Under Portaria SPA/MF 3.005, operators must report each player's balance as at 23:59:59 on 5 October to the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting by 7 October, and meet every remaining obligation by 15 December
• Licensed operators have been told to redirect all traffic to brasilsembets.gov.br from 00:01 on 6 October; the National Association of Games and Lotteries (ANJL) has told members not to, and has asked the Supreme Court to stop it
• Finance Minister Dario Durigan said a daily flow of R$600 million to betting had been "basically" cancelled, more than 10,000 sites had been sent for blocking, and 48 player accounts holding over R$500,000 each would be examined for possible money laundering

The Central Bank Writes the Ban Into Each Payment Scheme

Brazil's Central Bank (BCB) has followed its general order of 28 September with amendments to the rules of the country's main payment schemes. Resolutions BCB 595, 596 and 597, adopted on 30 September and published in the Diário Oficial da União on 2 October, implement Article 14 of Provisional Measure 1.394, which banned sports betting and online casino in Brazil on 25 September.

Each inserts the same duty: to prevent "o processamento, a liquidação e a viabilização de transações destinadas a loterias de aposta de quota fixa" (the processing, settlement and enabling of transactions destined for fixed-odds betting). Resolution 595 adds it to the rules of TED, the same-day interbank transfer, and Resolution 596 to the boleto, the bank payment slip; both say the duty has applied since the measure was published on 25 September. Resolution 597 adds it as a new duty of every Pix participant in Article 32 of the Pix regulation, next to the existing duty to publicise the Special Return Mechanism (MED) used for fraud. The TED and Pix texts exempt transactions needed to wind operators down and refund bettors. The boleto text has no exception.

The texts do not define a betting transaction, list companies or set penalties, and they do not cover cards. None of the resolutions the bank adopted on 30 September, numbered 591 to 597, creates the electronic system that Article 15 of the measure says the Central Bank "will establish" so that institutions can reject Pix transfers linked to illegal betting and return the money between banks. On the bank's own register, that tool remains unissued.

Balances by Wednesday, Everything Else by 15 December

The Secretariat of Prizes and Betting (SPA) of the Finance Ministry set the wind-down procedure in Portaria SPA/MF 3.005, signed by Secretary Daniele Correa Cardoso and published in an extra edition of the Diário Oficial on 2 October. Operators must report through the SPA's betting management system, Sigap, the final balance in every player wallet "às 23h59min59s" on 5 October, and the balance of their transaction account, by 7 October, three working days after publication. For each player they must give the taxpayer number (CPF), the amount owed and the account it is to be paid into.

Every other obligation under the measure, including paying the levies due under the 2018 lottery law on bets taken up to the last day, must be met by 15 December, on pain of the penalties in Article 41 of Law 14.790. Sanction cases suspended by the measure will be closed for operators that comply in full; miss 15 December, and they resume. The ordinance sets no date by which players must receive their money. The government's timetable, as set out at a press conference on Friday, has operators sending balances to the banks on 7 and 8 October and banks paying between 9 and 14 October, with Caixa Econômica Federal as the last resort.

Sites Told to Point Their Traffic at the Government

Licensed operators have also been told to redirect "todo o tráfego de usuários" (all user traffic) for the addresses listed in an annex to brasilsembets.gov.br from 00:01 on 6 October, using their own servers and DNS, and to disable the subdomains, IP addresses and APIs that serve their mobile, desktop and smart TV apps, according to the text of the notice published by BNLData. The notice cites Article 23 of the measure, warns of sanctions for "tentativa de evasão tecnológica" (attempted technological evasion) and says Anatel and the internet steering committee CGI.br will block sites that do not comply. BNLData reported it as an SPA notice; the ANJL and the Brazilian Institute for Responsible Gaming (IBJR) told the Supreme Court it came from the Justice Ministry's National Secretariat of Digital Rights.

The ANJL told members not to comply, calling the order "absurda, eleitoreira e ilegal" (absurd, electioneering and illegal), according to BNLData. "Não é coerente, portanto, tratar empresas regularmente autorizadas como se fossem instrumentos da comunicação oficial do Executivo" (it is not coherent to treat duly authorised companies as instruments of the Executive's official communication), said ANJL president Plínio Lemos Jorge. When iGaming Times checked early on Monday, brasilsembets.gov.br returned a "page not found" message.

The Government Counts the First Week

At a press conference on Friday with Justice Minister Wellington César Lima e Silva, Durigan said more than 10,000 betting sites had been sent to Anatel for blocking since the measure took effect, and that a flow to betting platforms that had reached R$600 million (approximately $115 million) a day had been "basicamente anulado" (basically cancelled), according to O Globo as reported by BNLData. Player balances at licensed operators had fallen from R$2.1 billion to R$1.453 billion (approximately $280 million) across 28.65 million taxpayer numbers. The ministry had found 48 accounts with balances above R$500,000 (approximately $96,000) each. "Não estou dizendo que todas são, mas há uma movimentação que discrepa do grosso das contas" (I am not saying they all are, but there is activity that departs from the bulk of accounts), Durigan said of possible money laundering.

The site count has roughly doubled since the government asked for 5,209 to be blocked in the measure's first days. The Finance Ministry is keeping the SPA and its 100 posts, saying "esta equipe já derrubou 56 mil sites ilegais" (this team has already taken down 56,000 illegal sites), Folha de S.Paulo reported. One of the largest operators has laid off 500 call-centre staff, according to Folha, and an LCA Consultores and Cruz Consulting study estimates 15,500 jobs at risk across the sector.

The R$600 Million Figure Is the Licensed Market, Not the Whole Market

Durigan's figure is consistent with the Central Bank's own data: its 2024 study put Pix transfers to betting companies at R$18 billion to R$21 billion a month, roughly R$600 million to R$700 million a day. What has been cancelled is the flow the state could see, to companies with known accounts at supervised banks. The resolutions bind banks to refuse payments they can identify, but without a definition, a shared list or the Article 15 return system, payments routed through intermediaries, third-party accounts or crypto remain each bank's judgement. Durigan said the Central Bank's early evidence is that money is moving to other sectors of the economy. That may be so, but the bank's 2024 study, made before licensing began, found most Pix flows to betting went to companies registered under activity codes other than gambling, which is also what payments to disguised operators look like.

The Redirect Is the Weakest Link in the Shutdown

Article 23 of the measure lets the Finance and Justice ministries request that betting sites be blocked or redirected, but it does not say where to, and its enforcement provisions deal only with blocking through Anatel and CGI.br. The ANJL's objection to conscripting private domains for a government campaign therefore has a textual footing, and Anatel blocking, which the notice itself names as the fallback, would achieve the shutdown without it. A request the industry has publicly refused, pointing at a domain that was not serving a page hours before the deadline, invites a confrontation the payment and reporting rules avoid, and hands operators a fresh argument in a court already deciding whether to suspend the measure.

Brazil has now built most of the machinery to close its licensed market by Tuesday. The piece that would starve the illegal one, a way to stop and claw back Pix payments in real time, is still missing.