India Betting Payment Methods

Is online betting legal in India?

No. The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 received the President’s assent and was published in the Gazette on 22 August 2025. It bans every “online money game”, defined as an online game, “irrespective of whether such game is based on skill, chance, or both”, played by paying fees or depositing money or other stakes in the expectation of winning; e-sports are excluded. Section 5 forbids anyone to offer such a service, section 6 forbids its advertising and section 7 forbids any bank, financial institution “or any other person facilitating financial transactions or authorisation of funds” to process a payment for one. Offering a money game or facilitating its payments carries up to three years in prison or a fine of up to ₹1 crore, advertising up to two years or ₹50 lakh, and repeat offences three to five years and ₹1 to 2 crore. Section 1(2) extends the Act to the whole of India and to services “operated from outside the territory of India”, which is where every bookmaker on this page operates from.

The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Rules, 2026, gazetted on 22 April 2026, came into force on 1 May 2026 and set up the Online Gaming Authority of India under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology in Delhi. The Authority decides whether a game is an online money game and recognises, categorises and registers online games; it licenses no betting, which is why the regulator box above says none. The Press Information Bureau’s note of 30 April 2026 puts the position in one line: “The Act imposes a complete ban on all forms of online money games”, banks and payment systems “are barred from processing transactions linked to such games”, and unlawful platforms may be blocked under the Information Technology Act, 2000. The Act penalises the operator, the advertiser and the payment facilitator; the text we read has no offence for the player.

Before 2025 gambling was a matter for each State, under laws going back to the Public Gambling Act, 1867, which punished public gambling and the keeping of a common gaming house in the United Provinces, East Punjab, Delhi and the Central Provinces, and under the States’ own Acts since. Section 18 of the 2025 Act gives it overriding effect over any other Act to the extent of inconsistency, so the ban applies whatever a State law says about games of skill.

Tax follows the winnings whatever the law says about the game. Winnings from betting, gambling, races and card games are taxed at a flat 30% under section 115BB of the Income-tax Act; winnings from online games are taxed at 30% on net winnings under section 115BBJ, with tax deducted at source at 30% when you withdraw or at the end of the financial year, no basic exemption and no deductions, since 1 April 2023. GST of 28% on the face value of online gaming and casino supplies was fixed by the GST Council in August 2023 for implementation from 1 October 2023. The Reserve Bank adds a rule of its own: money may not be sent abroad under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme for lottery tickets, football pools or sweepstakes.

Which payment methods work from India

Of the 49 bookmakers open to India, 41 list Visa and 38 Mastercard; 37 take Bitcoin and 33 Ethereum; 35 take Neteller, 33 Skrill, 23 Paysafecard, 18 Payz, 15 Jeton, 12 MiFinity and 11 MuchBetter; 16 list Google Pay, 12 Apple Pay and 5 PayPal. Twenty-one list a bank transfer. Four, 1xBet, 22Bet, Melbet and Secretbet, list UPI, Paytm and PhonePe, and none lists RuPay. The list says what the cashier offers; the law says what the bank will let through.

• Section 7 stops the payment at the bank. Since 22 August 2025 no bank, card issuer, UPI app, wallet or other payment facilitator in India may process a payment for an online money game, and the Rules of 1 May 2026 give the Authority the task of making sure they do not. A rupee card payment, a UPI transfer or a wallet load made to bet is a transaction the provider must refuse, and the penalty for processing it falls on the provider.
• Cards are locked for foreign use by default. Under the Reserve Bank’s rules of 15 January 2020 every card is issued for use at ATMs and terminals in India only; online and international use must be switched on in the bank’s app, with a limit you set. The Liberalised Remittance Scheme separately prohibits sending money abroad for lottery tickets, football pools and sweepstakes.
• Wallets have withdrawn. Neteller no longer opens accounts for residents of India, Payz does not list India, MuchBetter warns that transfers to and from some merchants are not available there, and Skrill publishes no India fee table; Sticpay loads by UPI at 8%. A wallet loaded from India to bet is “any other person facilitating financial transactions” under section 7, so the wallet is caught like the bank.
• Apple Pay and Google Pay. India is on Apple’s list of countries that support Apple Pay and on Google’s list for Google Pay online; Google Pay’s India page takes only Visa and Mastercard for card payments, and the Google Pay app in India is a UPI app. Both charge a card or a bank account that section 7 binds.
• Crypto is taxed, not banned. Income from the transfer of a virtual digital asset is taxed at 30% under section 115BBH with no deduction other than the cost of acquisition and no set-off of losses, since 1 April 2023. The 37 bookmakers that take Bitcoin from India are offshore sites, most of them licensed in Curaçao, whose crypto guideline of June 2026 requires them to screen the wallet you deposit from and to verify that you own the wallet you withdraw to.
• PayPal. PayPal India accepts Visa and Mastercard and admits gambling payments only from operators it has approved in jurisdictions where betting is legal, which India is not; the five bookmakers that list PayPal offer it elsewhere.

Local payment methods

India’s local methods are the UPI apps, and all of them are bound by section 7 of the 2025 Act: they may not process a payment for an online money game. What follows describes what they are, with the figures their owners publish, not a route into a bookmaker.

UPI

The Unified Payments Interface is the instant payment system of the National Payments Corporation of India, regulated by the Reserve Bank. You pay from a bank account through a payment address such as name@upi and a four- to six-digit UPI PIN; the limit is ₹1 lakh per transaction for ordinary payments, and NPCI’s FAQ states that “there are no charges to be paid by the customer using bank account to make your UPI payments”. UPI started as a pilot in April 2016 with 21 banks; in the financial year 2025-26 it carried over 24,162 crore transactions worth about ₹314 lakh crore, and in July 2026 alone 2,365.8 crore transactions worth ₹29.87 lakh crore, across 741 banks. Four of the 49 bookmakers keep UPI in their global cashier list.

PhonePe

A UPI app with, by its own count as of September 2026, about 73 crore registered users and more than 5 crore merchants, plus a wallet, UPI Lite, a credit line on UPI and RuPay credit cards on UPI. The same four bookmakers list it.

Paytm

Paytm says more than 300 million Indians pay with it in shops and more than 49 million merchants accept it; the Paytm Wallet dates from 2014 and Paytm UPI Lite from 2023. The same four bookmakers list it. Paytm publishes no fee statement on its about page.

How to deposit and withdraw from India

• Read the law before the cashier. Since 22 August 2025 no bank, UPI app or wallet in India may process a payment for an online money game, and since 1 May 2026 an Authority exists to enforce that. The bookmakers below accept Indian players under foreign licences; the Act punishes the operator and the payment facilitator, not the user, but the money has no lawful route through an Indian provider.
• Rupee accounts. 29 of the 49 bookmakers offer an INR account; the others hold your balance in dollars or euros and the conversion happens on the way in and out, at the card issuer’s or wallet’s rate.
• Cards. A card issued in India works abroad only after you switch on international and online use in the bank’s app; the bank must decline a payment it identifies as gambling under section 7 and may not remit money for lotteries or sweepstakes under the Reserve Bank’s scheme.
• Tax. Winnings from betting and gambling are taxed at a flat 30% with no basic exemption and no deductions; winnings from online games at 30% on net winnings, with 30% deducted at source on withdrawal; income from selling crypto at 30% with no set-off of losses.
• Wallets. Neteller opens no new accounts for residents of India, Payz does not list India and MuchBetter warns that some merchants are unavailable there; a wallet loaded from India to bet is a payment facilitator under section 7, and a crypto withdrawal from a Curaçao-licensed site goes only to a wallet you can prove is yours.