Germany has launched a new campaign against online casino payment processors following this spring’s approval of a new temporary federal gambling treaty.

On Monday, Boris Pistorius, Minister of the Interior and Sport in the German state of Lower Saxony, announced that the state government had informed an unidentified international payment processor to immediately suspend its relationships with internationally licensed online casino operators targeting German customers.

Pistorius added that his office was “signalling and expect pressure on other payment service providers” to observe the federal gambling treaty’s requirement to “refrain from payments in connection with unauthorized gambling.” Some processors have already taken these steps, which Pistorius held up as evidence that “an effective approach is quite possible.”

Earlier this spring, a German court ruled that local financial institutions were responsible for ensuring that their operations didn’t facilitate illegal gambling transactions. This followed a 2018 ruling in which a German bank was told it couldn’t compel a reluctant gambler to pay charges he’d incurred funding wagers with an internationally licensed online casino.