Ukraine’s gambling regulator PlayCity has launched a tender to find a development partner for an automated system that would restrict military personnel’s access to gambling platforms, according to SBC News. The system, still in the procurement phase, would automatically verify whether an individual is serving in the armed forces and restrict their gambling access accordingly.
A joint testing phase between PlayCity and the Ministry of Defense is expected to run until 24 December, after which the system is expected to go live. No completed deployment has been confirmed at this stage.
How the check would work
Once built, the system would run a background check against Ukraine’s national list of people restricted from gambling, then cross-reference that result with the country’s military personnel register. State-wide compliance and implementation are intended to run through Trembita, the government’s decentralised data-exchange platform connecting databases across Ukrainian agencies.
The military personnel register itself is being developed in connection with the Ministry of Defense, which will jointly test the interaction between the two systems with PlayCity before any rollout.
Part of a wider compliance push
The tender extends a run of PlayCity initiatives aimed at tightening oversight of Ukraine’s licensed gambling market since it replaced the previous regulator, KRAIL. KRAIL had been active since 2020, when Ukraine legalised gambling for the first time in more than a decade, but President Volodymyr Zelensky disbanded the body in 2025 after the war with Russia and resulting conscription orders displaced key staff.
In the year since taking over oversight, PlayCity has already constituted compliance breaches worth millions of pounds spanning years under KRAIL’s supervision. The regulator has also rolled out its State Online Monitoring System to bring transparency to licensed operators’ activity, and partnered with Kick and YouTube to curb illegal gambling advertising targeting the Ukrainian population.
What it means for operators
If the system proceeds to launch, it would use Trembita to connect the gambling-restriction and military personnel registers as part of the automated check. The available evidence does not specify integration standards, penalties for non-compliance, or a firm implementation deadline beyond the joint testing period running through 24 December.
Source: SBC News
Petra Vanhoof has spent the better part of a decade following the shifting tides of gambling regulation across Europe and beyond. She came up through the compliance side of the industry before pivoting to writing, which gives her a grounded, no-nonsense perspective on the rules, loopholes, and political maneuvering that shape how operators actually do business. She is particularly drawn to the gap between what regulators say and what the market ends up doing in response.