🗞 Key News of the Week: main developments covered from July 27–31

🗞 Key News of the Week: main developments covered from July 27–31

🇺🇾 Uruguay has blocked nearly 2,000 illegal gambling platforms, yet new domains continue to appear. Offshore operators increasingly rely on local intermediaries to collect players’ funds and transfer them abroad, demonstrating why website blocking alone does not eliminate the underlying payment infrastructure.

🇦🇿 UnionPay is expanding its partnership with Azerbaijan’s Bir ecosystem. Its cards are already accepted by more than 1,000 online merchants and 1,300 ATMs. The next phase will extend acceptance to physical POS terminals and card-to-card transfers.

🇩🇴 The Dominican Republic’s House of Deputies approved a gambling regulation bill. The framework covers land-based and online operators, introduces ten-year licences, and provides criminal penalties of up to ten years for unlicensed activity and the promotion of illegal platforms.

🇨🇳 Five operators of the Sifang payment aggregator received prison sentences of three to six years. The platform allegedly processed around $436 million through 105 commercial accounts, ten third-party payment companies, bank cards, USDT and third-party banking credentials.

🇧🇴 Bolivia’s largest private bank launched the KOIN digital-asset wallet. Built on Ethereum and Polygon, it supports USDC and USDT, QR payments, internal transfers and ATM withdrawals. Visa will enable stablecoin payments at participating merchants. Crypto is becoming a banking product rather than merely an alternative rail.

🇦🇷 Buenos Aires Province proposed stricter controls for licensed gambling platforms, including biometric authentication, 60-minute sessions and a maximum of three sessions per day. The measures would apply to seven licensed operators—while offshore platforms would remain outside their direct reach.

🇹🇷 Turkish prosecutors are seeking sentences of six to 39 years in an offshore betting case. The network allegedly connected 56 platforms, 14 million accounts and approximately €4.5 billion in transactions, with cryptocurrency used to move funds to overseas wallets.

🇺🇸 X launched X Money, combining a Visa debit card, instant P2P transfers, up to 3% cashback and a yield of up to 6% for eligible subscribers. Musk’s “everything app” is now developing a serious financial layer.

💱 BitMart users reported withdrawal delays and additional wallet restrictions as the exchange winds down operations. Additional KYC, source-of-funds and withdrawal-address checks have slowed access to funds, while the BMX token reportedly fell 81.5% in one week.

🇺🇸🇹🇷 The United States sanctioned Turkish fintech Zedpay over its alleged role in an Iranian sanctions-evasion network. U.S. authorities claim the company processed more than $94 billion in transactions involving Iranian clients.

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