Understand what the Gambling Regulation Act changes for you

The Act is being switched on in stages, and the stage that matters most to players came through S.I. No. 31/2026, which the Minister for Justice signed on 3 February 2026 and which took effect on 5 February 2026.

That order commenced the ban on credit cards as a means of paying for gambling, the duty on licensees to let customers set monetary limits on remote gambling, and the rules on closing accounts and refunding the money held in them. It also gave the GRAI power to cap how much can be lodged with a licensee, and it obliges licensees to report suspicious gambling activity to the Authority.

Enforcement came with it.

Under the same order the GRAI can impose administrative fines of up to €20 million or 10% of turnover, whichever is greater, and can ask the courts to order an unlicensed operator to stop trading. The Betting Act 1931 and the Totalisator Act 1929 were repealed at the same time, so the old Revenue-based betting licences are being replaced rather than run in parallel.

What still waits on an order

Not every section listed in the Act is live, and that distinction carries real weight for a reader. Our analysis found no commencement order for remote gaming licences, which would cover online casino games, and the GRAI has said gaming, lottery, B2B and charitable licences will open in phases through 2027 and 2028. Where we could not confirm that a section, such as the advertising watershed in section 149, has been commenced, this page says so rather than presenting it as settled law.

For most players the first visible change is at the cashier, because a licensee can no longer accept a credit card for gambling or facilitate credit in any other form.

Debit cards, bank transfers and e-wallets are not caught by that ban, although an e-wallet funded from a credit card raises a question each operator answers in its own terms, so read the payment page before you rely on one. The Act also requires licensees to give you the means to set monetary limits on remote gambling, and the GRAI holds a separate power to cap the amount that may be lodged with a licensee at all.

Account closure is now a legal obligation.

When you ask a licensee to close your account, the commenced provisions on account closure and refunds govern how the balance held for you is returned, which removes much of the old uncertainty over dormant funds. KYC and anti-money-laundering checks continue alongside all of this: a licensee must verify age before you play and, in most cases, will ask for identity documents before a first withdrawal, and a larger withdrawal can typically trigger a source-of-funds request. Those checks come from anti-money-laundering law as much as from the Act, so they are not a sign that an operator is stalling.

The Act gives you a regulator at home, but only for operators that actually hold one of its licences, so the useful habit is to check the register before you deposit rather than after a dispute.

The February 2026 order commenced the GRAI’s complaints functions together with its enforcement powers. In practice a complaint usually starts with the operator’s own procedure, and the GRAI becomes the next step where that procedure fails.

A logo in a website footer proves nothing.

The steps below follow the order we use when we review an operator for this site, and each one relies on public information rather than on an account or a deposit.

Section 157 of the Act deals with inducements, and its wording is strict: a licensee may not offer an inducement to a person or a specific group of persons, and the Minister may make regulations restricting offers to the general public.

The section defines an inducement as a benefit or advantage intended to encourage participation in gambling, which would take in free bets, free spins, cashback and VIP rewards aimed at individual customers. Breaching it is a criminal offence, carrying up to five years’ imprisonment on indictment.

Our analysis could not confirm that section 157 or the advertising rules in section 149, including the proposed 05:30 to 21:00 broadcast watershed, have been commenced, and no inducement regulations under section 157(4) were found during our checks, so treat both as provisions in the Act whose practical effect depends on a further order.

The National Gambling Exclusion Register is in the same position. The GRAI has tendered for the technology behind it, but we found no confirmation that it is open to players, and self-exclusion remains something you arrange operator by operator until it launches.