Lithuania has approved an amendment requiring financial institutions to block all payment card transactions from unregulated operators.
It has been noted by the government that online gambling participation with unlicensed operators will significantly prohibited. This follows the signing of the law.
The Lithuanian government consulted relevant financial institutions on the amendments to the law. They concluded that payments should be blocked for users when they attempt to gamble through unlicensed gambling portals. This works to increase gambling protections and contribute to overall increased transparency in the gambling sector.
One issue highlighted was that the current payment procedures do not give the necessary data to restrict prohibited transactions. These include the legal entity of the recipient, company code and bank account number. This has historically obstructed financial institutions’ ability to properly implement the mandatory payment blocking instructions from gambling regulators.
The LPT or Gaming Supervisory Authority will compile a list of companies entitled to conduct remote gaming activities in Lithuania. The whitelist that authorizes businesses to conduct payments as usual will include only the licensed operators.
Payment service providers who will not comply with the new law within 24 hours of receiving a directive could be subject to fines ranging from EUR 1,800 to EUR 3,800. After banning 1,600 websites from Lithuania’s markets, the LPT supports applying direct controls on banks as the best measure to monitor black market activities.
The government noted that it also accounted for measures to fight unlicensed remote gambling during the initial regulation of the activity in 2015. The LPT has blocked 1,809 illegal sites from 2016 to the end of the previous year. It has also issued mandatory instructions for payment service providers to block payments. In spite of the efforts, illegal online gambling activities still accounted for 15% of the gambling market in Lithuania in 2021. This amounts to EUR 18 million. The Treasury of Lithuania believes that illegal gambling has cost the government EUR 2 million in uncollected taxes.
