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On January 3rd, China daily reported on a newly issued ban on the online sale of lottery tickets: The online sale of lottery tickets was banned yesterday by a circular jointly issued by the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the General Administration of Sports. ... Private operators have been caught masquerading as State-run lotteries on the Internet and some websites have provided illegal channels for gambling on sports and the underground Mark Six. The ban is one of several steps that have been taken to crack down on lottery fraud and the malpractice that has haunted the lottery industry.
Currently the sale of online lottery tickets is a service offered by almost all of China's payment providers including UMPay, YeePay, Tenpay, China M-World, and Nation-M. As the vast majority of China's payment providers are already struggling to break even, a new regulation which will wipe out one of their few revenue streams can spell trouble. The ban, therefore, is a potential blow to China's third-party payment providers. This will likely not affect larger providers such as Tenpay, and Yeepay whose main business comes from Paipai, and Eachnet, respectively. However, this can have a strong negative effect on smaller providers such as China M-World and Nation-M. |
