Online gambling may happen on a screen, but every deposit still has to move through the financial system.
That gives South African regulators another place to focus their attention, especially as tighter rules bring the businesses handling cross-border payments under closer scrutiny.
South Africans gambling on an overseas website still need a way to pay. Money leaves a local bank account or card, reaches the gambling company and, when there is a withdrawal, comes back again.
That puts payment infrastructure into the wider regulatory picture. As South Africa increases its oversight of businesses handling payments for offshore merchants, the financial route between a local customer and an overseas gambling platform becomes increasingly relevant too.
Gambling has become a R74.5 billion business
There is plenty of money to follow. Mzansi’s gross gambling revenue reached R74.5 billion in 2024/25, up 25.6% from the previous year. Sports betting has grown even faster, with gross gambling revenue rising 390% in five years.
The numbers have also caught National Treasury’s attention. Its proposed national tax on online gambling would charge 20% of gross gambling revenue alongside existing provincial taxes and could raise more than R10 billion. That tax is still a proposal, with draft legislation expected later in 2026.
At that scale, enforcement is about money as much as websites. Every online bet needs a payment route, and that creates another place where authorities can see what is happening.
The payment method is becoming part of the picture
Paying online no longer means typing your card number into a checkout page. Digital wallets are becoming a bigger part of everyday spending in South Africa, with the value of wallet transactions processed by Payfast growing nearly 155% between 1 January and 18 May 2026 compared with the same period in 2025.
That wider choice also makes the payment chain more interesting for regulators. Money can pass through a payment service before it reaches the business receiving it, so knowing who is behind a transaction becomes important.
Offshore merchants still need a route into the payment system
The Reserve Bank is already looking closely at the businesses that help South African payments reach offshore merchants. In June 2026, it announced plans for a coordinated regulatory approach covering cross-border payment facilitators.
These companies aggregate payments made in South Africa for overseas businesses selling goods or digital services. They work under sponsorship arrangements with authorised domestic acquirers, although the facilitators themselves are currently unregulated in South Africa.
The proposed rules would bring them under requirements covering cross-border settlement and reporting. The Reserve Bank also wants consistent oversight where the domestic payment system meets foreign-exchange controls.
The announcement does not target gambling specifically, but it shows where financial regulation is heading. An overseas company may operate beyond South Africa’s borders, yet the payment taking money from a South African customer still passes through businesses that have a connection to the local financial system.
What the customer sees is only the front end
From the customer’s side, paying an online gambling operator can look simple. Pick a deposit method, enter an amount and make the payment. The machinery behind that transaction is far less obvious.
Comparison sites add important context by showing which payment methods different platforms support, alongside details such as withdrawal times, transaction limits and other payment conditions.
Those details give players a clearer picture of the payment options available before making a deposit. They do not, however, establish whether a platform is legally authorised to offer gambling in South Africa, that needs to be checked against official South African regulatory information.
A payment option on the screen is the front end of a transaction that still needs to identify a merchant and move the money through the companies handling the payment.
Faster payments raise the stakes for oversight
South Africa also wants digital payments to become faster and cheaper. The Reserve Bank has put modernising the existing payment system ahead of launching a retail central bank digital currency, with its Payments Ecosystem Modernisation programme aimed at improving the infrastructure South Africans already use.
That creates a straightforward regulatory challenge. Easier digital payments give consumers more ways to move money, but the companies handling those transactions still need to know where the money is going. For offshore gambling, that can make the payment route easier to reach than the operator receiving the deposit.
Withdrawals bring the money back through the system
The same issue works in reverse when a player cashes out. A withdrawal from an offshore operator has to find its way back to the customer, bringing the transaction into contact with payment companies again.
That return journey gives financial businesses another point at which the merchant and source of the payment can become visible. Following the money therefore works in both directions.
The choke point may sit between customer and operator
Chasing an offshore gambling company across borders is difficult. The payment, however, still has to connect a South African customer with that offshore business. SARB's proposed regulation of cross-border payment facilitators is not specifically a gambling measure, but it shows that the infrastructure connecting local customers with offshore merchants is coming under closer scrutiny.
For gambling regulators, the question now is whether that financial route could eventually become as important to enforcement as the websites themselves