The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) said it has stepped up enforcement of interactive gambling safeguards, while reporting a very high rate of industry compliance with the new credit card and digital currency ban for online wagering.
In its 2024–25 compliance report, the Australian media watchdog detailed targeted activities focusing on enforcing the National Self-Exclusion Register (NSER) rules, ensuring adherence to the new payment bans, and expanding tools to disrupt illegal offshore gambling services.
The ACMA initiated 10 new investigations and closed 10 during the period, shifting its focus from education to active enforcement of NSER compliance. The NSER, which allows Australians to exclude themselves from all licensed online wagering, had nearly 45,000 exclusions as of June 30, 2025.
Enforcement actions finalized across six matters utilized a range of powers. Betchoice, for example, paid a AU$1 million ($658,209) penalty and accepted a two-year enforceable undertaking requiring an independent review of its systems and staff training.
Ultrabet and PointsBet each accepted 18-month enforceable undertakings with requirements for independent reviews and remedial measures. A remedial direction was issued to ReadyBet. Lastly, Topbet and Vicbet were issued formal warnings.
Following the ban on credit cards, credit-related products, and digital currencies (cryptocurrency) for online wagering, which commenced on June 11th, 2024, the ACMA reported a very high level of compliance, with no investigations commenced. A consumer awareness campaign resulted in significant increases in traffic to relevant information on the ACMA website.
Compliance activities also included a desktop review in March 2025, which identified 50 licensed wagering services that still referenced the prohibited payment methods in their terms and conditions (T&Cs). All providers contacted subsequently removed the references to credit cards and/or crypto from their T&Cs by June 30th, 2025.
Disruption of illegal gambling services
The ACMA continued its strategy to disrupt illegal offshore gambling services, noting that approximately 220 illegal services have exited the Australian market since expanded enforcement began over eight years ago. New disruption tools implemented this year include:
- The ACMA co-chairs the new Fintel Alliance Micro-Laundering and Illegal Gambling project with AUSTRAC. The project was formed to engage financial institutions and law enforcement to examine and disrupt payments to illegal services, particularly in response to a rise in illicit services offering the Australian-only PayID.
- The regulator introduced new procedures for reporting illegal content to third parties, including hosting providers, domain registrars, and social media platforms. The ACMA reported that most parties took action in response, including Google removing certain illegal gambling content blocked by ISPs from its Australian search results.
The ACMA said it also engaged with 63 software providers whose licensed games were available on illegal gambling websites.
Twenty-seven providers responded by committing to compliance and taking immediate action to ensure their content was not available in restricted jurisdictions like Australia, and a further seven removed or geo-blocked their games following the correspondence.
In addition, the ACMA improved the efficiency of website blocking with expanded activities and targeted blocking of the most harmful sites that attempt to circumvent the blocks.
