Bank’s obligations under Polish gambling legislation

We advised a leading Polish commercial bank in:

The scope of the bank’s responsibilities in combating illegal gambling.

Polish gambling legislation obliges telecommunications companies and payment service providers to play an active role in combating illegal gambling. In Poland, the Ministry of Finance maintains a register of illegal gambling domains (https://hazard.mf.gov.pl/). Telecoms providers are obliged to block traffic to these domains, and payment service providers cannot offer payment services on these domains (art. 15f, 15g of the Gambling Act). Failure to fulfil these obligations is punishable by a fine. The performance of these obligations by these providers is the subject of audit activities by the National Revenue Administration (art. 99a of the National Revenue Administration Act). Audit activities are currently being conducted by the Head of the Opole Customs and Tax Office (Article 15h of the Act). If the audit reveals that the obligations have not been met, the report is sent to the relevant supervisory body (UKE, KNF). The main legal risk for payment service providers under these provisions is the extent to which they are obliged to prevent illegal gambling. The gambling regulations prohibit them from providing payment services on websites in the registry. This does not mean that they are carrying out transactions for customers. At the same time, the terms and conditions of many providers indicate a ban on customers making payments to gaming organisers from accounts, cards or payment applications.

DLK’s advisory included:

• Determining the actions that constitute the provision of payment services on a website and indicating the actions that do not constitute such provision.
• Indicating model scenarios in which provision occurs.
• Detailed definition of the obligations of the payment service provider, separately for the roles of the payment provider and the recipient provider.
• The significance of the provisions relating to participation in gambling games.
• The meaning of the provisions relating to participation in gambling in user agreements.
• Imposing a fine, including the application of Part IVa of the Code of Administrative Procedure.
• Technical issues, including the role of subdomains and subpages, calculating the number of users for fines, the meaning of “technical capabilities” of payment service providers.