Will There Be Online Gambling in Singapore?

• Published: December 2, 2013
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The deputy minister of Home Affairs of Singapore, S. Iswaran, have mentioned a consideration for the restriction of online casino and gambling for the nation’s lawmakers. The consideration of such a regulation would mean various implementations for online casinos and gambling opearting in Singapore.

Under the new law, it means that online gambling could be banned in Singapore. This will lead to new regulations to ensure that websites for betting will be blocked. Even advertisement that promotes gambling will be prohibited within the law. Such efforts will be a part of ensuring activities such as online casinos and gambling will be curbed.

During the launch of the third Symposium on Casino Regulation at the Police Cantonment Complex, S. Iswaran mentioned that online casinos and gambling can “become a source or conduit of funds for other illegal activities and syndicated crime” thus such activities need to be halted. The symposium is held biennially, and has served as been an important platform for the Casino Regulatory Authority (CRA) and Singapore Police Force (SPF) to forge closer ties and exchange ideas with their local and overseas partners in casino regulation and law enforcement.

In May this year, the government released an announcement with details on how it is studying to restrict online gambling sit access and prevent its social impact. Iswaran mentions that the law enforcement will pursue actions against middle-men, facilitators and service providers to ensure the law in being put in place.

At this time, most current gambling sites allow credit card payment and wire transfer through service providers such as Paypal and Western Union. Furthermore there are also various other ways that online gamers can pay for credits and play online gambling games on application platforms and networking site. This is method is known as remote gambling. Remote gambling refers to the activity of gambling happening over the World Wide Web or communications devices such as smart phones. Remote gambling will allow the activity to be accessible anywhere and anytime and prior to the consideration, there have been no specific law that deals with it.

Therefore, Iswaran also notes that the measures taken by the enforcement will not be completely foolproof. With that, they will take more effort in impeding access and send a much clearer signal with regards to Singapore’s law on online gambling.

Apart from the two casino licensee in Singapore, the Totalisator Board is the only operator that is permitted to run gambling activities such as betting on sports and lottery systems.