Brazil blocks online betting access for social programme beneficiaries under new federal rules

Brazil has begun blocking social welfare beneficiaries from opening or maintaining accounts on licensed betting platforms, enforcing Supreme Court orders through a Ministry of Finance system that automatically identifies Bolsa Família and BPC recipients and cuts off their access to online gambling.

Brazil’s federal government has moved from restricting the use of social benefit money for gambling to blocking access to online betting platforms altogether for social programme beneficiaries

On 1 October 2025, the Secretariat of Prizes and Bets (SPA) at the Ministry of Finance issued Normative Ordinance SPA/MF No 2,217/2025 and Normative Instruction No 22/2025, implementing a Supreme Federal Court (STF) ruling handed down by Justice Luiz Fux in November 2024

Under the new rules, operators licensed under Brazil’s “bets law” (Law 14.790/2023) must integrate with the federal Sistema de Gestão de Apostas (SIGAP). At two key points – during account registration and at a player’s first login each day – platforms are required to send the customer’s CPF (tax ID) to SIGAP and check it against the national databases of Bolsa Família and Benefício de Prestação Continuada (BPC) recipients

If the CPF matches a listed beneficiary, operators must refuse registration or, for existing customers, block access, close the account and refund any remaining balance back to the user. The SPA gave companies 30 days to implement the technical changes and 45 days to screen their entire existing customer base, with ongoing checks required at regular intervals

Implementation has now moved into full effect. According to reporting confirmed by the Ministry of Finance, approximately 900,000 Bolsa Família and BPC beneficiaries were blocked from accessing betting platforms as of 1 December 2025, in direct compliance with the STF mandate to prevent public assistance funds from being channelled into gambling

The Ministry stresses that benefits themselves will not be suspended; instead, betting companies carry the obligation to prevent registration and access by welfare recipients and to return funds in closed accounts. Officials frame the measure as a social-protection tool designed to shield vulnerable households from economic harm caused by online betting

The policy, however, has triggered intense legal and industry debate. The Brazilian Association for Economic Freedom (Able) and other critics argue that a blanket access ban goes beyond the original STF concern about misuse of benefit funds and amounts to “excessive state paternalism” and “socioeconomic segregation” They suggest an alternative model that would prohibit the use of welfare money for betting while still allowing beneficiaries to open accounts with other income sources

Regulators and social-policy advocates counter that, once benefits are paid, it is practically impossible to trace the origin of deposits on betting sites, making an access-based veto the only workable way to ensure that public assistance is not diverted into gambling

As Brazil’s regulated betting market continues to expand, the social-benefit access ban has become a central test case for how far governments can go in using account-level controls to protect vulnerable groups – and whether such measures reduce harm or instead push part of the player base toward unlicensed operators.