China’s anti-online gambling campaign has taken down a major ‘fourth party’ payment processor facilitating cross-border payments with international gambling sites.
On Thursday, authorities in the city of Xiamen announced the arrests of 146 individuals suspected of providing payment processing for internationally based gambling sites, a sector that Chinese authorities have identified as a new focus of their ceaseless anti-gambling efforts.
The Xiamen police reportedly began investigating the payment platform in May. When a gambler wanted to fund his/her account, the gambling site would send the customer’s information to the payment platform, which created fake invoices for online car rental services or something equally innocuous.
Once this bill has been created, a QR code was sent back to the gambling site, which displayed the code for their customer to scan, thereby confirming the payment and ensuring the transfer of funds to the gambling site. The payment platform reportedly received a commission of 1-4% for this service.