South Africa: The Facilitators, Criminals and Money Launderers in SA's Gambling Crisis

By Dewald Van Rensburg

Greedy local financial service giants and offshore betting pirates are helping drive our vast and fast-growing online gambling crisis, while the industry is also shaping up to be a major money laundering risk.

The online gambling industry, which is fast reaching catastrophic proportions in South Africa, does not exist in a vacuum.

It requires accommodative regulations and tax regimes - which SA's antiquated and fragmented legislation supplies in spades. It feeds off a desperate population that wants to believe in the life-changing potential of an elusive jackpot. Above all, it needs a financial system that facilitates funnelling billions in bets through its platforms at the least possible cost and with the least possible hassle.

The South African financial services industry has made this shockingly easy - and has made itself an accomplice to the online gambling pandemic.

The 'legals'

Practically all the banks, including Standard Bank, FirstRand (FNB) and Nedbank make gambling companies prominent pre-set beneficiaries on their apps - alongside things like airtime and municipal utilities payments. Absa and Capitec are seemingly partial exceptions although they too have gambling companies as "public beneficiaries".

But another major part of the financial infrastructure that allows gambling to thrive sits with a set of major household name corporations that have developed bank-less "universal voucher" systems that bridge the gap between the cash economy and digital payments.

By their very nature, these...

Read the full story on Daily Maverick.

Copyright © 2025 Daily Maverick. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.