Betting on Borrowed Money: Why Credit Cards and Crypto Keep Getting Banned
Expertise: Online casino, iGaming
Great Britain’s credit card gambling ban took effect on April 14, 2020, three months after the Gambling Commission reported that 22% of online gamblers using credit cards were classed as problem gamblers. UK Finance put the number of people gambling on a UK-issued credit card at around 800,000. Britain was not the first market to act, as Belgium had closed the card route for online gambling in June 2019, but it was the first to apply the rule to every licensed product, online and in person, on a single morning.
Those two rules became the template that Australia, Brazil, Ireland, Sweden and a growing list of US states have copied in the years since. What separates the bans now is not whether the card is blocked but how far each regulator follows the borrowing once it leaves the card. Australia blocks credit cards, card-linked wallets and digital currency together. Sweden regulates gambling financed by credit in any form. Ontario has no market-wide card ban at all. The US got there through its largest operators before most of its legislatures did.
Why Credit Card Gambling Carries an Extra Cost
A credit card deposit does not change the odds. It changes who is funding the loss and for how long. A debit card deposit stops when the balance hits zero, and a bad Saturday ends there. A credit card deposit keeps going until the issuer’s limit, and the player who is down for the week and topping up at midnight because the card still has room is the customer every one of these bans was written for. The loss is then repaid with interest over months.
Card issuers price that risk before the first bet is placed. A December 2024 Consumer Financial Protection Bureau analysis found that issuers allowing sportsbook transactions treat them as cash advances, charging the greater of $10 or 5% in most agreements it reviewed, with interest running from the transaction date even for cardholders who clear their balance every month. Senator Elizabeth Warren’s February 2026 letters to 11 betting companies did the arithmetic that made the headlines: a $10 fee on a $20 deposit adds 50% to the cost before a wager is settled.
So sportsbook credit card deposits are expensive in a way no other method is, and the cost lands on a sum the operator’s own margin says the player is expected to lose. A credit card gambling ban targets that borrowing, which the Gambling Commission’s 2020 announcement described as gambling with money consumers do not have. A credit card deposit creates debt by design, and the fee and the interest are still there long after the bet is settled.
Countries That Ban Credit Card Betting and How Crypto Fits
| Market | Credit Card Position | Effective or Current Status | Crypto at Licensed Operators |
|---|---|---|---|
| Belgium | Credit cards barred for online gambling; e-payment systems must reject card-funded payments. | June 1, 2019 | Not addressed by the credit card rule. |
| Great Britain | Credit card payments banned, including payments funded by credit cards through e-wallets and other money service businesses. | April 14, 2020 | No licensed operator currently accepts crypto; the Gambling Commission is exploring a framework for its use. |
| Australia | Credit cards and funds linked to credit cards banned for online and telephone wagering. | June 11, 2024 | Digital currency banned for covered wagering services. |
| Brazil | Credit cards and other post-paid instruments barred in the regulated fixed-odds market. | Market launched January 1, 2025; licensed sites offline since October 6, 2026. | Virtual assets barred; no licensed fixed-odds market currently operates. |
| Ireland | Credit cards, credit facilities and digital payments funded from credit cards banned for covered gambling. | February 5, 2026 | No specific crypto rule in the credit provision. |
| Sweden | Licensed gambling may not be financed with credit of any kind, beyond credit cards alone. | May 1, 2026 | Not addressed by the May 2026 credit rule. |
| United States | State by state; the largest operators have removed credit cards from their state-regulated platforms. | Varies by state and operator | Rules vary by state; DraftKings accepts converted crypto in IL, KY, NH and VT, while Massachusetts prohibits crypto-to-cash funding. |
| Ontario | No market-wide credit card ban; availability varies by operator. | Market opened April 4, 2022 | AGCO standards rule out accepting cryptocurrency. |
Where the table says a credit rule does not address crypto, that is not a green light, as payment, licensing and anti-money laundering rules still decide whether a licensed operator can take it. The strictest regimes named both payment categories in the same breath. ACMA states that from June 11, 2024, online and telephone wagering operators cannot accept credit cards, funds linked to credit cards, digital wallets among them, or digital currency, and lotteries sit outside that ban.
Brazil’s 2024 payment ordinance likewise barred credit cards, other post-paid instruments and virtual assets before its regulated fixed-odds market had taken a single bet. Those rules lasted 21 months. The federal government ordered every licensed fixed-odds site offline on October 6, 2026, and Brazil’s market shutdown was a decision taken on public-health and household-debt grounds rather than payment policy, one that handed those carefully policed deposits to sites that take whatever a player has.
Sweden Regulates the Credit, Not Just the Card
Sweden goes further than the other countries that ban credit card betting because its rule is about the borrowing, not the piece of plastic. From May 1, 2026, licensees and gambling agents may not allow or assist gambling financed with credit, and they must take appropriate steps to counter it. Spelinspektionen’s guidance defines credit to include deferred payment, credit cards, invoices, bank loans and borrowing from another person, and the rule applies to every licensed product and every channel.
The regulator does not expect an investigation into every payment. A purchase must be refused when the licensee or agent knows, or later learns, that the stake is credit-financed, and online operators are expected to block credit cards and e-wallet payments funded by one. That is the difference between a rule aimed at the card number typed into the cashier and a rule aimed at the loan taken out on Monday and deposited by debit card on Tuesday, which every other ban in the table leaves untouched.
Ireland reaches beyond the physical card too. Section 165 of the Gambling Regulation Act 2024 prohibits credit card payments, licensee-provided credit and the knowing facilitation of credit, and it expressly includes electronic or digital payments funded from a credit card. The provision commenced on February 5, 2026, the same day the commencement order switched on central licensing and enforcement powers, so Ireland’s ban arrived with its regulator. Section 165 says nothing about cryptocurrency.
US Operators Removed Credit Cards Before Most States Did
Massachusetts shows why the US story cannot be reduced to operators acting first. Credit card funding was already banned when mobile sports betting launched in 2023, and in July 2025 the Massachusetts Gaming Commission fined DraftKings $450,000 after 242 credit card deposits from 218 customers funded 1,160 impermissible wagers with $83,667.92 in handle. The sums were small, and the signal was not.
The DraftKings credit card policy changed nationwide on August 25, 2025, when the operator ended credit card deposits across its US sportsbook and casino products, citing cash advance fees, higher interest rates and customer protection. The rest of the market followed in the spring of 2026, and none of them stopped at the sportsbook.
The FanDuel credit card ban took effect on March 2 and covered sportsbook, casino and racing. BetMGM began blocking cards for sports betting and online casino on March 31, bet365 ended them on April 13, and Caesars Digital removed them on April 14 across its mainland US online brands, Caesars Palace Online Casino among them. Those decisions settled the question for most American players before their legislatures had, without creating a nationwide statutory ban.
State rules kept moving at their own pace. Illinois adopted its sports wagering credit card rule in April 2025 and had licensees compliant by November. Virginia’s ban took effect on July 1, 2026 under a law signed that April. Colorado’s SB 26-131, effective August 12, 2026, bans internet sportsbook credit card deposits and limits a player to six deposits in a gaming day, a rule about frequency rather than dollar value. Ohio’s regulator approved its own rule in July and is waiting on legislative review.
The operators gave their reasons, and the reasons tell you who was using the cards. DraftKings pointed to cash advance fees and interest. Caesars talked about simplifying the deposit experience. Read together, they describe a method that produced chargebacks and customers who found a $10 fee on a statement and blamed the app rather than the bank. Where those customers went is the question none of the statements answers. The clearest clue is in how US operators are spreading deposits across debit, ACH and approved wallets since the cards came out.
Crypto Gambling Regulation and the US Stablecoin Question
Credit is money the player does not have. Crypto is money the regulator struggles to see, and crypto gambling regulation in every licensed market starts from that difference. In the US the line runs between a payment that arrives as cryptocurrency and one that arrives as dollars after conversion. DraftKings introduced a crypto-to-cash funding route in Illinois, Kentucky, New Hampshire and Vermont, where a third-party service converts USD-pegged stablecoins and DraftKings never holds a token. Massachusetts looked at the same product in December 2025 and barred it, with one of its enforcement staff calling crypto “not ready for primetime”.
Great Britain is weighing a bigger step. In February 2026, Gambling Commission executive director Tim Miller said the regulator was exploring a path for cryptoassets to become a payment option at licensed gambling businesses, timed to the Financial Conduct Authority’s cryptoasset regime due in October 2027. The reason is in the Commission’s own research. Its October 2026 report on the illegal market found that the search phrase “not on GamStop” now works as shorthand for a bundle of features, credit card and cryptocurrency betting among them, with searches up 120% year on year.
The report calls black-market use a niche behavior and does not blame the 2020 ban for it. A regulator does not spend a conference speech on crypto payments, though, unless it believes some of its customers already pay that way somewhere else. Crypto is not invisible, but a wallet address does not identify the person holding it, and licensed operators still owe identity, source-of-funds and anti-money laundering checks on every deposit. Ontario takes a different approach. AGCO’s standards prohibit cryptocurrency deposits at licensed Ontario online casinos, while allowing operators to accept credit card payments.
What a Credit Card Gambling Ban Does Not Cover
Taking the credit card off the deposit screen removes the easiest way to bet with borrowed money, not the only one. Great Britain blocks credit card funds that pass through e-wallets and other money service businesses, Ireland extends its rule to digital payments funded from a credit card, and Australia covers funds linked to one. Those three have shut the obvious detour of a card loaded into a wallet and the wallet emptied into a betting account. Most US state rules do not mention wallets at all, so a PayPal balance topped up from a credit card the week before is, in most of America, debit money.
Separate borrowing is harder to spot. A personal loan or an overdraft moved into a bank account and then deposited by debit card looks like any other deposit, and a card-specific rule cannot see the chain behind it. Sweden is the only jurisdiction that has written that chain into law, and the only one whose guidance names deferred payment and invoice purchases, which is where buy-now-pay-later lives.
The deposit screen does the rest. An app that has removed credit cards has not removed the one-tap redeposit, the saved payment method or the prompt that appears when a balance drops below the size of the last bet. A payment ban lowers how much a player can lose on a bad night. It does nothing about how often the app invites them to try again.
What the Bans Add Up To
Six years of this policy spreading from Brussels and London to Canberra, Brasília, Dublin, Stockholm and Boston have settled one question and left another open. Removing credit cards from licensed operators is cheap, fast and popular, and operators will do it themselves once the fee economics and the regulatory attention line up. What nobody has published is where the card customers went. Brazil’s first week without a licensed market is the sharpest evidence on offer: monitoring firms counted close to a thousand unlicensed domains aimed at Brazilian players within three days, almost all registered before the ban was signed.
That is why the regulator behind the first market-wide credit card gambling ban is now the one studying crypto deposits. A payment ban protects the player who stays and does nothing for the player who leaves, and the licensed market only wins that trade if its product holds people without the payment method. Sweden is the one jurisdiction in the table that has treated the problem as borrowing rather than plastic. The score that matters is not how many credit card deposits disappeared. It is how many of the people making them are still on a licensed site.
