When U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren took to X earlier this year to denounce what she called a “$10 junk fee just to fund a $20 bet”, she was not merely chastizing payment processors. Warren was signalling that the politics of how gamblers move their money is shifting, and payment rails – once the plumbing of the industry – are becoming a stage for public scrutiny.
South of the border, it feels like a movement is happening. Most major online gambling operators have stopped accepting credit card deposits across their entire U.S. operations, including:
bet365
BetMGM
Caesars
DraftKings
FanDuel
Meanwhile, numerous states already restricted their use for some forms of gambling before 2026, and several others have passed legislation or regulations this year to ban them for online sports betting. What began as a gripe about fees has morphed into a debate about whether gambling with borrowed money should exist at all.
Last week, I asked sports betting companies about Americans getting sc..