Regulation

EU wants fixed €2,000 threshold for gambling checks

By Johan Ekström · Published 29 October 2026

The EU’s new anti-money-laundering authority, AMLA, has put forward technical standards that would lock in a €2,000 threshold for enhanced customer checks on gambling transactions. Sweden’s regulator Spelinspektionen backed the proposal in an update published on 22 October 2026. The rules form part of the EU’s new anti-money-laundering regulation, AMLR, which takes full effect on 10 July 2027.

What has changed

AMLA, which took over the EU’s coordinating anti-money-laundering work from the European supervisory authorities in early 2026, has sent a draft to the European Commission containing technical guidelines setting out criteria for identifying money laundering or illicit transactions, intended to serve as policy for EU member states’ supervisory authorities. In practice, this means operators and regulators are advised to apply enhanced customer due diligence to transactions reaching €2,000. The threshold itself isn’t new – it already exists under EU anti-money-laundering law and is retained in the new regulation taking full effect from July 2027.

Sweden is already among the countries at the forefront here. Sweden, France, Germany and Spain already apply due diligence checks on transactions of €2,000, covering stakes, winnings, or both. After industry objections that routine transactions and loyalty schemes risked being wrongly flagged, AMLA revised the draft so that transactions with the same gambling provider aren’t automatically counted together, with operators instead expected to assess the wider commercial context before linking transactions. Spelinspektionen had already, back in February, urged Swedish licence holders to take part in AMLA’s consultations on sanctions, transaction definitions and customer due diligence, with response deadlines during spring 2026, giving its opinion well ahead of this autumn’s announcement.

What it means for you

If you play at a Swedish-licensed casino, this proposal brings no major practical change right now. Sweden already applies checks around this level, so identity verification or questions about the source of funds for larger deposits or winnings are nothing new. That applies regardless of which brand you play at – the requirements follow the licence, not the individual site, as explained in our guide to Swedish licence vs foreign licence. A site without a Swedish licence isn’t bound by the same obligations, which is one reason Spelinspektionen warns against such alternatives.

If checks seem to slow down a withdrawal, it’s usually a regulatory requirement rather than an arbitrary decision by the operator. If gambling starts to feel hard to control, you can exclude yourself completely via Spelpaus.se, and free support is always available through Stödlinjen.se.

The bigger picture

Spelinspektionen has already shown it takes customer checks seriously. Several major operators were sanctioned in 2025 for shortcomings in their procedures. The court agreed with Spelinspektionen that the companies had committed serious breaches of the anti-money-laundering rules through inadequate customer due diligence, among them Betsson and Snabbare. It’s against that backdrop that Spelinspektionen’s positive response to AMLA’s proposal should be read – the regulator already has a track record to draw on.

The tightening comes as other parts of the Swedish gambling market are brought under the same framework. From 1 September 2026, Sweden’s land-based commercial casinos also became subject to the country’s anti-money-laundering rules, after an earlier exemption was removed. Together, these developments point toward an increasingly harmonised European approach to oversight, with Sweden long ahead of the curve and more EU countries now following as AMLA’s rules take full effect in 2027.