How Casino Payments Work at SRIJ-Licensed Operators in Portugal

Under Portugal’s Regime Jurídico dos Jogos e Apostas Online (RJO), a licensed operator must hold a bank account at a credit institution established in an EU member state, through which every transaction connected to its licensed activity must exclusively pass. This is a structural requirement on the operator, not a payment method choice — it is part of what SRIJ licensing actually enforces behind the scenes, regardless of which specific payment brands a player sees at checkout.

SRIJ’s own regulatory obligations state that an operator must transfer a player’s account balance, on request, to a payment account previously indicated and held by that player. In practice, this is an identity-matching requirement: the account receiving a withdrawal needs to actually belong to the verified player, not simply be any account they specify. This is consistent with the identity verification (KYC) process every licensed operator has to run before releasing funds.

MB WAY, the mobile payment app run by SIBS (the company behind Portugal’s Multibanco network), and Multibanco itself are both widely used by Portuguese players generally, alongside standard bank transfer and, at some operators, card payments. Exactly which methods a specific operator supports for deposits versus withdrawals varies — some payment methods that work for depositing are not necessarily available for withdrawing, so check an operator’s own current payment page for its specific setup rather than assuming every method works both ways.

SRIJ’s own published data draws a direct contrast between licensed and unlicensed play: unlicensed activity carries no legal protection, and none of the player-protection tools (including self-exclusion) are guaranteed to function the same way. Seeing a familiar-looking Portuguese payment method displayed on a casino’s checkout page is not, on its own, evidence that the operator is SRIJ-licensed — check the operator directly against SRIJ’s official list of licensed entities rather than relying on the presence of a specific payment brand as a signal.