Between 20 October 2024 and 12 July 2026, the Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs said it had taken action against more than 3.7 million websites and pieces of online gambling content.
But the latest enforcement push suggests the government is increasingly acknowledging a basic limitation:
blocking websites does not dismantle an online gambling market if operators can still move money.
At the OJK Banking Forum on 14 July, Indonesia’s Financial Services Authority, communications ministry and banking sector agreed to intensify cooperation against online gambling and digital fraud.
The new focus is not only on content removal. It is on bank accounts, payment flows, customer identification and the wider financial infrastructure supporting illegal operators.
From domain blocking to financial disruption
Indonesia’s digital enforcement numbers are large, but they also reveal how persistent the market has become.
Millions of pages and advertisements can be removed, only for operators and affiliates to reappear through new domains, social-media accounts or mirror sites.
That has pushed the government towards a broader strategy.
By May 2026, the OJK said banks had:
rejected 2.8 million proposed customer relationships;
closed 51,200 customer relationships suspected of links to online gambling;
blocked 32,454 accounts after enhanced due-diligence reviews.
Banks also reported a 260.03% increase in suspicious-transaction reports linked to gambling-related predicate offences during 2025.
Those figures do not mean that every rejected or closed relationship belonged to a gambling operator. They reflect a wider risk-control process involving suspicious customers, mule accounts and connected financial activity.
Even so, they show the direction of policy.
Indonesia is trying to make it harder to deposit, withdraw and distribute gambling proceeds, rather than relying only on internet blocking.
Why blocking alone is not enough
Online gambling businesses are unusually adaptable.
A blocked website can be replaced quickly. A domain can redirect elsewhere. An affiliate can move from one social platform to another. A player may continue using the same operator through a different mirror.
Payments are harder to replace at scale.
Operators still need accounts, intermediaries, crypto conversion, e-wallets or other routes connecting players to the platform. If those channels become unreliable, the customer experience deteriorates and the cost of operating increases.
Communications Minister Meutya Hafid said the crackdown must target the full ecosystem, including websites, financial flows and the networks behind them. She specifically highlighted mule accounts as an area requiring stronger action.
This makes Indonesia part of a wider regulatory trend.
Authorities are increasingly targeting the infrastructure around offshore gambling:
Japan is pursuing affiliates and payment intermediaries.
China is blocking domains and investigating cross-border payment networks.
The United Kingdom is examining advertising and sponsorship connected to unlicensed operators.
Indonesia is combining content removal with banking controls.
The target is no longer only the operator’s website. It is the system that allows the operator to acquire users and move money.
A difficult balance for banks
The strategy creates a difficult operational problem for Indonesia’s banking sector.
Banks must identify suspicious gambling-related activity without cutting legitimate users out of the financial system.
That requires more than simply blocking every account reported by another agency.
Banks are being asked to use enhanced due diligence, monitor linked national identity numbers and examine networks of related accounts. The OJK has also instructed institutions to investigate accounts connected through matching identity information.
This approach may be more effective than closing isolated accounts, because gambling networks frequently rely on multiple accounts controlled by the same individuals or groups.
However, it also creates risks:
false positives;
inconsistent enforcement between banks;
displacement towards cash, crypto or informal payment networks;
increased compliance costs;
migration towards accounts in other jurisdictions.
The effectiveness of the policy will depend on how quickly intelligence can move between Komdigi, the OJK, Bank Indonesia, banks and law-enforcement agencies.
The market is moving faster than enforcement
Indonesia’s experience shows the limits of measuring success through takedown numbers alone.
Blocking 3.7 million pages sounds decisive, but the continued growth of financial enforcement suggests that the underlying market remains active.
The more useful questions are:
Are players finding it harder to deposit?
Are operators losing access to reliable local payment routes?
Are account networks being disrupted faster than they can be rebuilt?
Are transactions moving into less visible channels?
Is gambling participation actually falling?
Those indicators would reveal more than the total number of blocked URLs.
Indonesia’s crackdown is therefore entering a more serious phase.
Website blocking remains part of the strategy, but the government now appears to understand that online gambling survives through infrastructure, not only through websites.
The real test will be whether cutting payment access can achieve what millions of takedowns have not.
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LinkedIn: East Asia Reports · Author: Adrià Mas Rodríguez