Indonesia’s Ministry of Communications and Digital (Komdigi) has blocked 3.7 million online gambling sites and pieces of gambling-related content since October 2024, and has referred some 38,000 suspected gambling-linked bank accounts to the financial regulator, of which 32,500 have been closed.
Communications and Digital Minister Meutya Hafid disclosed the figures at the OJK Banking Forum 2026, held at the Bank Indonesia office complex in Jakarta on Tuesday. She said the takedowns covered the period from October 20, 2024 to July 12, 2026. Hafid said the accounts referred to the Financial Services Authority (OJK) had been closed at a rate of 88.5 percent, and credited the regulator and the banking sector for a result she said was not easily achieved. She said site blocking alone was insufficient and that the wider ecosystem had to be severed, describing holding accounts as the neck of the online gambling ecosystem.
The minister said enforcement had been supported by public reporting, with about 156,000 accounts flagged through the government’s cekrekening.id portal as suspected of use in online gambling. Komdigi separately received reports of 85,500 mobile numbers suspected of use in scamming.
Hafid said the ministry was moving from reactive takedowns toward pattern-based anomaly detection, and pointed to data integration between agencies as central to speeding up referrals. She added that 6.8 million subscribers had completed biometric SIM registration as of July 2026, part of an effort to strengthen identification of mobile users.
Data presented at the forum showed the banks with the highest numbers of flagged accounts were Bank Central Asia with more than 7,000, Bank Rakyat Indonesia with 6,400, Bank Negara Indonesia with 6,100 and Bank Mandiri with 4,649. CIMB Niaga recorded 1,363 and Bank Syariah Indonesia 681. Hafid indicated BCA’s figure may reflect its larger customer base, and said the data did not imply wrongdoing by the banks. She cautioned institutions not absent from the list against complacency, saying operators shifted sites, accounts and transaction methods rapidly to evade detection.
The OJK has separately reported blocking 32,453 accounts indicated in online gambling as of May 2026. The regulator has directed banks to tighten due diligence and know-your-customer checks, freeze accounts suspected of use in illegal online gambling, identify related accounts registered to the same national identification numbers, and monitor transaction patterns more closely.
Indonesia prohibits gambling in all forms, yet continues to record substantial activity. National Police Chief General Listyo Sigit Prabowo said earlier this month that authorities handled 718 illegal online gambling cases in the first half of 2026, arresting 1,164 suspects and seizing assets worth IDR1.75 trillion ($105 million).
Financial intelligence agency PPATK has reported online gambling transactions of IDR286.84 trillion ($17.3 billion) in 2025, across more than 422 million transactions involving around 12.3 million people.
Enforcement has also extended to social media. Indonesia partnered with Meta earlier this month to address gambling-related spam on Facebook and Instagram, following a reported increase in gambling promotions distributed through automated bot networks.
