How gambling payments work: who does what in the payment chain

A deposit to a regulated gambling site passes through several firms, each with its own job and its own regulator. Knowing who does what explains where a payment can fail, who holds the money at each moment and whose rules apply.

By Clera Dukuk · Published 24 October 2026

Coverage

General explainer; rules cited for Great Britain, Ontario and the EU

Sources checked

24 October 2026

Next review

24 April 2027

The main roles

The European Central Bank's payments glossary describes the acquirer as the entity, usually a credit institution, to which the merchant transmits the information needed to process a card payment, and the issuer as the institution that authorises transactions and guarantees payment to the acquirer for transactions that follow the scheme's rules.

A card deposit, step by step

When a player deposits by debit card, the cashier sends the request to the PSP or acquirer, which passes it through the card scheme to the issuer. The issuer approves or declines in seconds. Money moves later, through clearing and settlement. Our guide to authorisation and settlement explains why an approved deposit is not yet money in the operator's bank.

How card schemes treat gambling

Card schemes identify gambling transactions with a merchant category code. Visa's Integrity Risk Program document (April 2023) lists gambling, MCC 7995, among its Tier 1 high integrity risk categories. It says acquirers must be registered before soliciting such merchants and that "All High Integrity Risk Merchants must be registered with Visa prior to submitting transactions." Mastercard's Security Rules and Procedures (August 2026) identify non-face-to-face gambling transactions with MCC 7995 and include a registration section for non-face-to-face gambling merchants.

Correct coding matters because issuers can then apply their own policies, such as declining gambling transactions on credit cards where the law or the cardholder requires it. Visa's acceptance risk standards, published in its Ecosystem Risk Programs Guide (October 2024), require acquirers to assign the merchant category code that most accurately describes the business.

Other payment rails

• Open banking (pay by bank). A payment initiation service starts a bank transfer at the player's request. PSD2 defines it as "a service to initiate a payment order at the request of the payment service user with respect to a payment account held at another payment service provider". In the UK, open banking followed the Competition and Markets Authority's 2016 retail banking investigation and its 2017 order, implemented by Open Banking Limited.
• E-wallets. The player loads a wallet and pays from it. In Great Britain, operators should accept e-wallet payments only where the wallet provider can assure them that a credit card cannot be used to fund gambling.
• Payouts to cards. Visa Direct sends funds to eligible debit and prepaid cards through original credit transactions; Visa's product sheet for gaming payouts notes that actual fund availability varies by financial institution and region.

Who holds the money, and when

Once a deposit settles, the operator holds the player's balance. In Great Britain, licence condition 4.1.1 requires remote operators that hold customer funds to keep them "in a separate client bank account or accounts", and condition 4.2.1 requires operators to tell customers how well those funds are protected on insolvency. Before settlement, money may sit with the acquirer or a payment firm, whose own safeguarding duties apply. In the UK those duties fall under the Payment Services Regulations 2017 and, since 7 May 2026, the FCA's CASS 15 rules.

Where the gambling rules bite

Gambling regulators shape the payment chain through the operator. British licensees may take payments only through payment services defined in the Payment Services Regulations (licence condition 5.1.2) and may not accept credit cards (condition 6.1.2). Ontario's AGCO requires deposits to be authorised by a financial services provider and bars cryptocurrency deposits. Our payment rules by market lists each jurisdiction's requirements.

Questions about gambling payment infrastructure