The Compliance Bill Is Coming: Australia's Gambling Industry Faces a New Reality

Recently, Australia's gambling industry has been hit with three significant regulatory developments that, taken together, signal a decisive shift in how the country intends to manage the intersection of gambling and financial compliance. For payment providers and fintech operators with exposure to the Australian market, the message is clear: the compliance bar is being raised.

The first development came on July 3, when the Australian government introduced the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026 to Parliament. The government has described it as the strongest reform package in the country's history. Key measures include restricting gambling advertising on television to no more than three ads per hour between 6am and 8:30pm, a complete blackout during live sport broadcasts, and bans on the use of athletes, celebrities, and influencers in wagering promotions.

For the payments sector, the most consequential provision is not the advertising reform, but the enforcement. The legislation, if passed, would explicitly authorize banks and payment systems to block transactions to illegal gambling operators, while granting the Australian Communications and Media Authority broader and faster powers to block illegal gambling websites. This is a direct extension of financial infrastructure into gambling enforcement — payment providers operating in Australia will need to ensure their systems can identify and refuse transactions tied to unlicensed gambling activity.

The bill is not yet law and will face an eight-week Senate inquiry. Whether the bill passes in its current form or is strengthened further, the legislative direction is set.

The second and third developments came from AUSTRAC, Australia's anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing regulator. On July 4, AUSTRAC confirmed it had finalized its enforceable undertaking with Sportsbet after an independent external audit confirmed all required remediation had been completed. Sportsbet had been required to overhaul five key areas of its AML and CTF policies, including risk assessment methodology, customer monitoring, and suspicious matter reporting.

Then, on July 7, AUSTRAC moved against bet365. Following an independent audit that identified serious gaps in the operator's AML controls, bet365 entered into a legally binding enforceable undertaking requiring a systematic overhaul of its risk assessment processes and suspicious transaction monitoring. The action follows AUSTRAC's ongoing Federal Court proceedings against Entain Australia, filed in December 2024 and scheduled for hearing in November 2026, alleging systemic breaches of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 — allegations Entain has not yet had the opportunity to contest in court.

The pattern across all three developments is consistent. Australia is embedding financial compliance obligations directly into its gambling enforcement architecture, rather than relying solely on operator-level policing. For payment providers and digital finance companies operating in or entering the Australian market, compliance readiness is no longer optional.