Online gambling regulation

Online gambling has become such a lucrative industry in the Philippines and is now one of the biggest sources of funds for the government.

Whether it is online casino, online sports betting, online bingo, or mobile gambling, e-gambling has become so popular that it has now surpassed traditional or walk-in casinos as a source of revenue for the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor).

And why not? Ads for these gambling platforms are everywhere on social media, on massive billboards along major highways featuring celebrities, and even on television. There are also pop-up ads on mobile phones as well as on digital payment gateways that even provide the links to participate in these games.

Anyone with a smartphone or a laptop can easily place a bet by just a few clicks.

Pagcor regulates all games of chance and issues licenses to all gaming operations within the country. It issues licenses to local gaming operations conducted onsite as well as online and these include electronic bingo, e-casino, online poker games, online sports betting, to name a few.

As of July 30 this year, Pagcor has approved around 2,250 electronic games that include sports betting (covering all kinds of sports from basketball to darts to swimming), e-casino games (baccarat, blackjack, roulette, among others), e-bingo games, specialty games, but mostly e-casino games.

Pagcor, on its website, also has a list of authorized online gaming websites that offer e-casino games, e-bingo games, sports betting, specialty games and online poker games.

With electronic gaming on the rise, Pagcor expects up to P480 billion in gross gaming revenue (GGR) for 2025. At the end of the first quarter of 2025, its gross gaming revenues or revenues that gambling companies generate from those who place bets, surged by 27.44 percent to P104.12 billion, with Pagcor chair and CEO Al Tengco saying also that for the first time, revenues from e-gaming surpassed those from traditional casinos as of end-March.

He said that the e-games and e-bingo segment made history by becoming the industry’s top revenue driver for the first time, contributing P51.39 billion or 49.36 percent of the total first quarter GGR. Meanwhile, from license fees alone, Pagcor earned more than P50 million last year.

This does not include the taxes paid by gambling operators. The country’s largest online gaming firm had paid as much as P30-P40 billion in taxes last year.

But online gambling has become a huge societal problem – tearing families apart, depleting savings, pushing Filipinos into financial ruin, committing crimes and even suicide.

According to Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines president Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, online gambling has become a deep and widespread moral problem, hidden behind the guise of leisure and technology.

A 2021 Capstone-Intel survey found that 66 percent of Filipinos aged 18 to 24 have engaged in online gambling while 57 percent of middle-aged respondents from 41 to 55 years of age have reported participating in online gambling.

Several bills have been filed in Congress to restrict online gambling accessibility, especially through digital payment platforms that host and link gambling content, if not totally ban it.

E-wallets have become gateways to online gambling, enabling e-gamblers to send and receive money transfers to and from registered gambling merchants. When a customer wants to deposit funds into an online casino account for instance, they select the e-wallet as their payment methods and then authorize the transfer of the funds from the e-wallet to the customer’s casino account. This method is easier compared to bank transfers, or from a debit or credit card.

Just last week, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) ordered electronic wallet applications to remove from their platforms all links to online gambling. BSP Memorandum order  2025-29 issued Aug. 14 ordered e-wallet platforms to remove their in-app features promoting or allowing users to access e-gambling sites. Covered by the memo are e-wallets, banks through their payment apps and websites and other supervised entities.

The BSP order was made on the same day that Sen. Rodante Marcoleta, during the Senate public hearing on measures seeking to ban or regulate e-gambling, asked the BSP as an immediate response, to order e-wallet apps to deny all links to online gaming platforms.

The BSP suspension will remain in place until it finalizes a policy on online gambling payment services.

In compliance with the BSP order, e-wallet platform GCash announced that access to gaming on GLife, a marketplace feature within the GCash mobile app that allows users to access and purchase products and services from various brands and merchants, has been suspended beginning Aug. 16.

Meanwhile, Maya announced that effective also as of 8 p.m. last Aug. 16, access to gaming sites and apps through the Games feature on the Maya app will be disabled.

The BSP is now in the final stages of crafting tighter payment regulations aimed at curbing online gambling addiction and shielding Filipinos from the financial harm that it can cause.

The new regulations will include enhanced identity verification protocols such as biometric checks and facial recognition to ensure that only eligible individuals can use their funds for gambling. The BSP also plans to implement daily transaction limits and time-based restrictions on gambling-related payments to help prevent excessive losses and impulsive behavior. The rules will also require the availability of user tools that allow individuals to set personal spending limits or take voluntary breaks from gambling.

But the problem does not start and end with e-wallets.

According to Pagcor, while online gaming transactions have fallen by as much as 50 percent ever since the BSP issued the order, there is an uptick in the number of users turning to illegal gaming platforms. Pagcor revealed that there are about 12,000 illegal online gambling sites in operation compared to the 77 that are licensed in the country.

The BSP knows that online gambling thrives not only because of financial intermediaries under its supervision and regulation but also because of other enablers such as app stores and other platforms. In fact, in its draft circular, it is approaching the online gaming problem from an ecosystem perspective.

What we need is a comprehensive approach and solution to the problem so that other government institutions and even private stakeholders should do their part to make online gambling safer for Filipinos. After all, Pagcor will never support a total ban on online gaming as this would mean hundreds of billions in losses for the country.

The BSP’s swift and decisive move shows what effective governance can look like. With BSP having taken the lead, other state institutions and private stakeholders must now similarly act with the same urgency, clarity and accountability.

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