Islamic Republic of Pakistan Online Gambling Regulation, Licensing & Tax Regime

Pakistan (~230 million population, >97% Muslim) maintains a near-absolute constitutional and statutory prohibition on all forms of gambling. The federal Prevention of Gambling Act 1977 extends to the whole country and overrides other laws, reinforced by the Pakistan Penal Code and constitutional Islamic injunctions (Articles 31, 227, 37(g)). No gambling regulator, licence, or state lottery exists. A significant illegal offshore market — concentrated on cricket — persists, creating AML and payment-facilitation exposure rather than a commercially accessible market. This is a closed, hostile jurisdiction: a legal/AML risk signal, not an entry opportunity.

There is no gambling regulator and no licensing framework. The Prevention of Gambling Act 1977 prohibits all gambling and overrides other laws; the only statutory saving (s.11) is for games in a provincially licensed 'tourist complex' admitting foreigners only — a marginal historical derogation, not a commercial pathway. No B2C or B2B licence has ever been issued and no state lottery exists. All product classes are prohibited.

The National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency's action against 46 applications linked to illegal gambling, unlicensed trading, and data-privacy breaches operated at the distribution and platform-access layer, blocking applications rather than amending any licensing text. This is a probable-confidence finding, corroborated across independent trade-press coverage, though no primary regulator notice from the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority or the Federal Investigation Agency was located this cycle to confirm the scope of the block list. The action represents a tightening of the practical barrier facing any gambling-adjacent product that might otherwise reach Pakistani users through app-store or direct-download channels, even though the underlying statutory prohibition under the Prevention of Gambling Act, 1977 has not itself changed. Distribution-layer enforcement of this kind now sits alongside, rather than in place of, the base prohibition as the practical mechanism shaping platform access into the jurisdiction.

The Federal Investigation Agency's Faisalabad Composite Circle registered a First Information Report against eight individuals and eleven shell companies over roughly PKR 119.93 billion in transactions allegedly routed through JazzCash and Easypaisa corporate wallet accounts to six named offshore gambling platforms (U7777 Game, TD777, Game89, EPIWIN, B9 Game and S9 Game). The FIR cites the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act 1947 as its statutory basis, treating the conduct as unauthorised payment-settlement channelling rather than gambling offending directly. Investigators have flagged digital hawala activity and possible USDT or other crypto-channel use within the same case. In response, JazzCash closed or suspended more than one hundred aggregator accounts, with industry reporting citing a higher figure after internal review, and Easypaisa delayed merchant settlement channels from early October 2026 with no restoration date announced. This marks a shift in enforcement approach from blocking offshore apps and websites toward tracing and disrupting the domestic payment infrastructure that moves funds to them. No primary FIA case document has been retrieved, so the record rests on consistent secondary reporting rather than a filed court instrument.