A project seeks digital identity for betting in Colombia
Around 245,000 people in Colombia requested to be excluded from gaming platforms. This number was presented by Senator Gustavo Moreno to argue that the extent of gambling addiction in the country is being underestimated, and it supports the bill with which he seeks to toughen online gambling rules.
The central tool of the initiative is digital identity. Verification would aim to close a specific loophole: minors betting using a third party's account, and it would be accompanied by daily and monthly limits for both deposits and losses.
The profile of the Colombian bettor described by the legislator is young. According to the figures he presented, approximately 67 percent of those who bet in the country are between 18 and 29 years old and do so once a week, based on about eight million active accounts. In statements to Caracol Radio's 6AM W program, he estimated that around COP4.600m, about US$1.3m, was wagered between January and March 2025.
From the other side of the counter, the response was not an outright rejection. Evert Montero, head of the Colombian Federation of Gaming and Chance Businessmen (Fecoljuegos), also believes that responsible gambling must be promoted and recalled that licensed platforms already verify IDs and offer self-exclusion. His objection lies elsewhere: he maintained that the problem is not gambling itself but the inability to control illegal gambling.
Montero pointed to the State's difficulty in blocking clandestine websites that reappear in minutes under another address, and added a warning that the industry repeats throughout the region: over-regulation also creates friction, and this friction ends up fueling illegality by reducing the competitiveness of licensed operators against those who have none.
Despite the difference in emphasis, both parties ended up in the same place. Both the senator and the chamber agree that strict and effective control is needed, and that identity verification and betting limits are the most concrete tools to protect the user.
Colombia was the first country in the region to regulate online gambling in 2016, and its licensing model under Coljuegos is often cited as a reference. The discussion now opening is no longer about how to open a market but about how much to tighten it without pushing players outside the legal perimeter, the same dilemma currently faced by Brazil, Chile, and Peru through different paths.
Tags: Gustavo Moreno, Digital identity for betting, Fecoljuegos, Deposit and loss limits