Swedish regulator can’t stop Zimpler from working with offshore gambling operators, court rules

Sweden’s Court of Appeal has upheld the cancellation of Spelinspektionen’s injunction against the payment provider.

Sweden.- Zimpler can’t be stopped from working with unlicensed gambling operators. The Court of Appeal has rejected an appeal from the Swedish Gambling regulator Spelinspektionen against a lower court’s decision to annul an order that it issued against the payment provider.

Back in 2023, Spelinspektionen had ordered Zimpler to stop providing services such as BankID payment transactions for unlicensed gaming operators. It warned that it would fine the provider up to SEK25m (€2.2m) for failure to comply. But Zimpler took the matter to the Administrative Court, which ruled that Spelinspektionen had no grounds for its injunction. The court cancelled the order, but Spelinspektionen appealed.

The regulator’s argument was that Zimpler was supporting and even promoting illegal gambling by providing payment services to unlicensed operators, but the court in Linköping disagreed. It ruled that: “Spelinspektionen has not shown that there was illegal gambling, nor that Zimpler has promoted it. The appeal should therefore be rejected.”

The court also appeared to criticise Sweden’s gambling regulations. It said that while Zimpler had worked with unlicensed operators, regulations lacked “concreteness” in terms of how it should be defined that an operator is targeting Swedish players. It found that under the current wording, offshore gaming operators would not be in breach of the law if they provided services in English rather than Swedish since this was not considered to be targeting Swedish players.

The court said: “The court finds that not all games provided by gambling companies that lack a Swedish licence is prohibited under the Gambling Act, for example, online games that are not aimed at the Swedish market. The Act and its preparatory work lack concreteness regarding what is required for a gambling company to be considered to be targeting Sweden. This means that the court finds there were no conditions for Spelinspektionen to formulate the injunction against Zimpler.”