Rental of official payment gateways for gambling

In recent years, the activity of gambling and betting websites has increased greatly in the country. This increase occurs while due to the bad economic conditions, many people, especially the younger generation of the society, look at gambling as a source of income, and this causes the number of fans and users of these sites to increase daily. At the same time, sometimes many of these websites have official payment gateways and provide users with the possibility of paying through the banking system. Now the question is, how do these people have access to banking portals and can they use these services despite all the restrictions that sometimes exist for many domestic businesses?

The popularity of gambling

Sociologically, betting and gambling are usually more popular in societies that are either in good prosperity, or the level of prosperity in that society is at very low levels, which unfortunately Iran is in the second group of this category. In a situation where the welfare level in the society has decreased and job positions are usually difficult to find, the use of gambling and betting is known as a source of income. Meanwhile, the extensive advertising of these websites by artists, influencers and even Telegram channels and Instagram pages with a high audience are among the things that add to the recognition and increase in popularity of this category of sites.

In such a situation where daily gambling sites are advertised and the advertising feed constitutes a large part of influential groups in the society, it has been seen that many of these sites also use the services of domestic banks. This is while many domestic businesses have to go through Haft Khwan Rostam to get a payment gateway and they don’t have easy access to such a thing, so how do these websites have access to such a thing?

Traces of rent and relationship

Although “Economic World” tried to have a conversation with the relevant officials in the Central Bank regarding gambling websites, but unfortunately, no response was received from this policy-making body. But “Duniya Ekotsat” surveys show that the popular method of many of these websites is to rent a payment gateway.

There are many companies that operate in different fields and use different payment gateways for their business. Since some companies have multiple payment gateways, some of these gateways are underutilized or useless for these businesses. In this situation, they decide to rent their portal to these sites. In this case, the deposited amount is fully deposited into a valid legal or real account, and after money laundering and complete cleaning of the money order, this capital is taken out of the country. According to the latest data available in reliable sources, the annual turnover of the gambling industry in the country is between 9 and 12 thousand billion tomans, which means that every year between 180 and 240 million dollars of capital is taken out of the country through the gambling network. Of course, it should be noted that these numbers are all estimates, which are sometimes not very accurate due to the lack of recognition and complete aristocracy on the gambling network, and it is likely that the real numbers are much higher than what is stated in the estimates.

In addition to the rent of payment gateways, the traces of rent and relationship are also shown in these surveys. Some of these websites belong to people who have good relations at the highest level of the country and therefore have easy access to many of these banking services. Apart from this, some others activate the payment gateway services for themselves by paying huge sums of bribes to people usually inside PSPs. But in recent years, due to the increase in sensitivities of the central bank and the expansion of the tax system in the country, some of these groups have turned to using other methods.

Methods of bypassing the surveillance system

One of the most popular ways to bypass the banking system is to use card-to-card services and multiple bank cards. Renting bank cards is one of the most common methods used by these people. By creating a wide network in the country, gambling sites rent the bank cards of people who are mostly old and live in deprived areas of the country. Using the ignorance of these people makes them easily collect a large number of bank cards. In one of the police discoveries last year, more than 190 rented bank cards were seized from a gambling network, which shows the wide range of activities of only one gang in the country.

Among other things used by the sites is the use of Web Money and Perfect Money. Using this method of payment is one of the old and relatively popular methods of these websites due to the absence of any regulatory body. Recently, with the expansion of familiarity and use of cryptocurrencies in the country, this method has become a popular method among gambling sites. These sites bypass the regulatory system and payment system in the country by using some cryptocurrencies, which mainly include Tether and other stablecoins, as well as some private tokens such as Monero and Dash. But still, the use of banking portals is one of the most popular methods for these sites due to their high familiarity, convenience and wide range of users. Although the familiarity and use of cryptocurrencies is high in many major provinces of the country, these people are forced to use bank payment gateways to target weaker and more ignorant groups. But some of these sites are not just looking to make money through gambling and betting.

Other income streams of betting websites

Phishing is known as one of the most popular and easiest methods of theft in the country’s banking system. Under the pretext of authentication, some betting websites collect users’ basic information such as first and last name, contact number, and national ID card image. After receiving this information, they gain access to users’ bank information by creating a phishing portal and empty all users’ accounts overnight.

As a result, it seems that the central bank should increase the monitoring system of payment gateways, at least for the security of domestic capital, and the FATA police should also increase their monitoring of information on these websites. But in the end, first of all, there should be a focus on creating a culture about these sites for all ages, so that the country does not witness such problems.