MINCETUR is Peru’s tourism ministry, and buried inside it is the office that now decides whether a gambling offer you’re promoting is legal: the DGJCMT. Since February 2024, any operator taking Peruvian players — casino or sports betting — needs a DGJCMT authorization, or it’s running outside the law. This isn’t theoretical. On July 21, 2026, Mincetur blocked 36 unlicensed platforms and seized 39 slot machines in raids across Lima, Lambayeque, and Piura. One of the machines had reportedly been used by minors. If you’re sending traffic to Peru right now, this is the environment you’re sending it into.

Figure 1. Five inflection points in Peru’s remote-gaming regime, 2022–2026.

Two risks, and they’re not the same risk

Most write-ups about Peru’s gambling law are aimed at the operator deciding whether to apply for a license. You’re not that person, and the risk you’re carrying looks nothing like theirs.

The operator’s risk is criminal and financial. Running a gambling platform in Peru without authorization triggers Penal Code Article 243-C, amended specifically for remote gaming by Ley 31806. Peru’s regulator confirmed in July 2026 that promoting or facilitating illegal gambling carries one to four years of imprisonment, on top of an administrative fine that starts at 150 UIT — about S/825,000 at the 2026 UIT of S/5,500 — and revocation of any registrations the company holds. Mincetur can also order the block of the domain, the IP, and the payment rails through the Ministry of Transport and Communications. That’s the operator’s problem.

Yours is different, and it doesn’t require you to have broken any Peruvian law yourself. If the network you’re routing through pulls a brand’s offer after Mincetur flags it, your payout run stops mid-cycle — sometimes with confirmed conversions still sitting unpaid. If the domain you were sending clicks to gets blocked by the MTC, your traffic dies without warning and without a notification from anyone. And if a network you supply traffic to gets a reputational hit for carrying unlicensed LatAm gambling offers, that follows your account with them, not just the operator’s listing. None of this requires a court finding against you. It just requires the offer you picked to be the wrong one.

Figure 2. The operator’s exposure is criminal and financial; yours is commercial — and doesn’t require a court finding.

The practical upshot: vetting the license isn’t compliance theater you do to cover yourself legally. It’s the same due diligence you’d do before committing a media budget to any offer — except in Peru, the downside isn’t “this offer converts poorly,” it’s “this offer disappears mid-flight and takes your pending payout with it.”

One more thing worth flagging here: Article 243-C doesn’t just criminalize the operator’s day-to-day running of the platform. It also carries inhabilitación — a formal disqualification from the activity — which means a company caught operating unlicensed doesn’t get a warning and a chance to apply properly next quarter. It’s out, and anything built on top of that brand (your links, your creatives, your pending commissions) goes with it. That’s a harder stop than “the offer got paused” — it’s the kind of ending that leaves affiliate managers unreachable and support tickets unanswered, because there’s no longer a company on the other end that can legally respond.

There’s a second layer under the criminal one: administrative infractions. Ley 31557 splits violations into leve, grave, and muy grave categories, each with its own escalating sanctions, and a licensed operator that cuts corners on responsible-gambling tooling or player verification can get hit here even without losing its authorization outright — a suspension, a corrective order, or a fine that eats into the same commission pool you’re being paid from. You won’t see this coming from the outside. A brand can look fully licensed and compliant on the surface while sitting on an open administrative case that quietly slows down payouts for weeks.

Where the Peru market actually stands

The tax base is part of why enforcement keeps intensifying rather than sitting still. Mincetur projected roughly S/162 million a year in gaming-tax revenue when the regime launched, earmarked for tourism infrastructure, sports programs, and mental-health services — money the state doesn’t collect from operators sitting outside the licensed system. That’s a direct incentive for Mincetur to keep closing the gap between licensed and unlicensed supply, not a side effect of the law.

Regulator	MINCETUR, through the Dirección General de Juegos de Casino y Máquinas Tragamonedas (DGJCMT)
Governing law	Ley 31557 (August 2022), amended by Ley 31806 (June 2023)
Implementing regulation	Supreme Decree 005-2023-MINCETUR
In force since	February 10, 2024
Gaming tax	12% on net win (roughly 11.76% effective after a maintenance deduction), plus 1% ISC on every bet
Financial guarantee	The greater of 3% of annual net income or 600 UIT — about S/3.3 million at the 2026 UIT of S/5,500
License term	6 years, renewable, covering both remote gaming and remote sports betting under one authorization

The number of licensed brands is where you’ll find the most disagreement between sources, and it’s worth sitting with that disagreement instead of picking a number and moving on. Mincetur’s own October 2024 report put the count at 67 authorized brands belonging to 64 companies — Betano.pe was first through the door in March 2024, JackpotCity.pe was the last of that initial batch in August. By early 2026, industry trackers were citing 91 total licenses issued since the regime opened. By August 2026, the more commonly cited figure had settled around “more than 50” currently active betting houses — a smaller number than the cumulative total, because authorizations get suspended, surrendered, or not renewed as operators leave the market or get folded into acquisitions. None of these figures contradicts another one outright — they’re measuring different things: brands versus companies, cumulative grants versus currently active licenses. The point for you isn’t which figure is “right.” It’s that the list moves constantly enough that whatever count you saw in a March deck is already stale, and the only number that matters is whatever the DGJCMT registry shows the day you check it.

The institutional side backs this up. In 2025, Mincetur rewrote its internal organization (Decree 004-2025-MINCETUR) specifically to carve out a dedicated Dirección de Autorización y Registro de Juegos a Distancia y Apuestas Deportivas inside the DGJCMT — a standalone unit for online licensing that didn’t exist when the law first took effect. The law itself also requires every licensed platform to submit an independent compliance audit every two calendar years, on top of whatever spot checks Mincetur runs directly. None of this is decoration. It’s a regulator that’s still actively building out its enforcement capacity three years in, which is a different posture from a market where the rules are set and the regulator has moved on to something else.

How to actually verify a license before you send traffic

This is the part that gets you paid or gets your account flagged, so treat it as a five-minute habit before you touch any Peru offer, not a one-time check you do when you first sign a network.

Start at the registry, not the operator’s footer. DGJCMT publishes its list of authorized platforms directly on its site (apuestasdeportivas.mincetur.gob.pe), and that’s the only source that counts. A license number printed on a landing page is a claim, not proof — cross-check it against the register before you trust it. Authorized operators carry a number in the format XXXXXX-XXXX-MINCETUR/VMT/DGJCMT, and the two verticals use different code series: casino authorizations run in the 11-series, sports betting in the 21-series. A brand claiming both should show both.

Figure 3. How to read a DGJCMT authorization number — and which series matches which vertical.

Don’t use the domain extension as your shortcut. The regulation technically permits five domain formats — .bet.pe, .bet, .com, .pe, and .com.pe — and a fair number of guides (including earlier drafts of pieces like this one) treat .bet.pe as the tell for a locally licensed site. In practice, it isn’t: almost no licensed operator actually uses it. Most run on plain .pe or .com.pe. So a .bet.pe domain doesn’t confirm anything, and the absence of one doesn’t disqualify a site either. The domain extension is not a verification method here — it never was one you could rely on alone, and treating it as one will get you burned on a brand that happens to run standard .com with a valid license, or worse, one that runs a convincing .pe domain with no license behind it at all.

Treat “LatAm” or “Peru” in a network’s geo tag as a starting point, not confirmation. When a network’s offer description just says the GEO is open, ask the affiliate manager directly which specific DGJCMT authorization number backs it, and check that number yourself before you commit budget. If they can’t produce one quickly, that’s the answer.

Check the block list too, not just the license list. Mincetur’s July 21 enforcement action named 36 specific platforms — a number tied to that one action, not a running total, and it won’t automatically catch a rebrand or a new domain the same operator spins up next month. A brand’s absence from that specific list doesn’t mean it’s licensed; it just means it wasn’t in that batch. Verification only works in one direction: presence on the DGJCMT authorized register is what counts, not absence from a block notice.

Don’t stop at the brand — check the entity behind it. Because one company can hold multiple brand authorizations (recall the 67-brands-to-64-companies split from October 2024), a network sometimes lists a sub-brand or white-label that isn’t itself the license holder. If the operator name on the register doesn’t obviously match the brand you’re being pitched, ask which entity holds the authorization and how the brand relates to it, in writing, before you run traffic.

Figure 4. The five-step check to run before committing budget to any Peru offer.

What the regulation changes for your funnel

Peru’s framework isn’t just a licensing formality sitting behind the scenes — it shapes what your landing page and payment flow need to look like if you want the traffic you send to actually convert into paid players rather than bounce at signup.

Every licensed operator has to run mandatory player verification — DNI, foreign resident card (Carné de Extranjería), or passport, depending on nationality — before a player can access real-money games. That means your creative and pre-lander can promise instant play, but the actual funnel has a KYC step baked in that you don’t control and can’t shortcut. Build your expectations, and your CPA structure conversations with the network, around that friction rather than pretending it isn’t there.

Operators also maintain a self-exclusion registry (the Registro de Personas Prohibidas), and licensed platforms are required to check against it. This matters less for your creative than for your understanding of churn — some fraction of clicks you’d expect to convert simply can’t, by law.

Figure 5. Five gates between click and paid player — each one a real, uncontrollable drop-off point.

The one that affects your landing page directly: crypto is banned as a payment method for licensed Peru operators. Article 38.d of the implementing decree prohibits licensed platforms from offering or processing cryptocurrency deposits or withdrawals. If your creative or landing page leads with crypto-friendly messaging because that framing performs well in other LatAm GEOs, drop it for Peru specifically — it’s not just suboptimal, it misdescribes what the player will actually find at the operator. Licensed sites take Peruvian soles through local rails: Yape, Plin, PagoEfectivo, bank transfers, and cards.

Responsible-gambling tooling is also mandatory, not optional branding — deposit limits, session limits, and self-exclusion controls have to be built into the platform itself, not just mentioned in a footer disclaimer. If you’re used to promoting operators in less regulated GEOs where these tools are cosmetic at best, don’t assume the same in Peru. A licensed operator that skips this exposes itself to the same “grave” or “muy grave” infraction categories that cover unlicensed operation in the first place, and an infraction of that severity is exactly the kind of thing that gets a platform pulled from the register mid-campaign.

Peru vs. Brazil vs. Ecuador: three different affiliate environments

Affiliates who work multiple LatAm GEOs often assume the compliance posture that works in one transfers to the next. It doesn’t. Here’s where the three sit on the axes that actually matter for how you plan a campaign.

	Peru	Brazil	Ecuador
License required to advertise an operator	Yes — DGJCMT authorization; unlicensed offers get blocked and payouts are at risk	Yes — SPA federal authorization; affiliate liability is explicitly defined in SPA/MF rules, and operators must keep written contracts with affiliates	Only for sports betting — casino and other verticals remain banned outright regardless of any license
Google Ads gambling certification	Available — Peru sits in Google’s Group 1 of certifiable gambling markets	Available — Brazil is also in Group 1, with certification requirements tightened through 2026	Not available — Ecuador doesn’t appear on Google’s certified gambling markets list, so paid search for gambling offers isn’t a viable channel here
Market maturity	Mid-stage: regime live since Feb 2024, actively enforcing, brand count still shifting	Most mature of the three: market opened Jan 2025, ~78–80 operators licensed by mid-2026, moved into full enforcement phase with domain blocking and PIX payment cutoffs for unlicensed sites	Narrowest and newest: online sports betting only became formally licensed under the Organic Sports Law effective February 2026, with land-based casino still constitutionally banned since a 2011 referendum

Figure 6. Cost of entry and market posture across Peru, Brazil, and Ecuador.

The gap that trips people up most is Ecuador’s split personality: sports betting affiliate traffic is legal and licensable, but nothing else is, and the Attorney General reconfirmed as recently as May 2026 that the casino ban has no carve-outs — not even for nonprofits. If you’re running a single creative set across all three GEOs assuming “LatAm gambling” is one compliance posture, Ecuador is where that assumption breaks first.

Cost of entry tells a similar story about maturity. Brazil’s federal authorization runs into the millions of dollars and comes with a local-incorporation and data-residency burden that only serious operators absorb — one reason the market consolidated around roughly 80 licensed groups rather than the long tail you’d expect from a market this size. Ecuador’s annual sports-betting license fee sits around $315,000, closer to Peru’s guarantee requirement than to Brazil’s, but it buys access to a single vertical instead of the full remote-gaming-plus-betting scope Peru grants under one authorization. None of the three is “easier” than the others in absolute terms — they’re gatekeeping different things, at different price points, for different reasons, and that shapes which operators show up in each market’s affiliate programs in the first place.

For the license mechanics specific to each market — Brazil’s SPA authorization process and .bet.br domain requirement, or Ecuador’s Ministry of Sports licensing fee structure — see the dedicated GEO profiles for Brazil and Ecuador.

Pre-flight checklist before you send a single click

• Pull the specific DGJCMT authorization number from your affiliate manager — not a general “Peru is open” confirmation
• Cross-check that number against the DGJCMT public register yourself, same day
• Confirm the operator holds the right series for the vertical you’re promoting — 11 for casino, 21 for sports betting
• Ignore the domain extension as a signal either way; verify the license, not the URL
• Strip crypto messaging from Peru-specific creative and landers
• Ask what happens to your pending payouts contractually if the operator’s authorization is suspended mid-cycle — get this in writing before you scale spend, not after

Key Takeaways

• Peru has a real, checkable licensing system — DGJCMT publishes its authorized operator register directly, which puts you in a better position here than in fully grey markets, if you actually use it
• Your risk as an affiliate is commercial, not criminal: frozen payouts, dead domains, and network reputation damage, triggered the moment an operator you promoted loses its authorization
• The .bet.pe domain marker that gets cited as a shortcut isn’t reliable in practice — almost no licensed operator uses it, so check the register instead of the URL
• The exact count of licensed operators moves too often to quote a single number with confidence — verify live, every time, rather than trusting a cached list
• Peru and Brazil both allow licensed gambling advertising on Google Ads; Ecuador doesn’t, and its casino vertical stays banned regardless of licensing elsewhere in the business

FAQ

Do I need a Mincetur gaming license to run affiliate traffic in Peru?

No — the license requirement falls on the operator, not the affiliate. But you’re exposed to the consequences of promoting an unlicensed one: frozen payouts, blocked domains, and network account risk if Mincetur or your network flags the offer.

How do I verify a Peru gambling license?

Check the operator against DGJCMT’s published register at apuestasdeportivas.mincetur.gob.pe, and confirm the license number format (XXXXXX-XXXX-MINCETUR/VMT/DGJCMT) matches what’s on record — not just what’s printed on the operator’s site. Don’t rely on the domain extension as a substitute.

Is online gambling legal in Peru in 2026?

Yes, for operators holding a DGJCMT authorization under Ley 31557. Unlicensed platforms are illegal, and Mincetur has been actively blocking them and seizing physical gaming equipment throughout 2026, including a 36-platform block on July 21.

What happens if I promote an unlicensed operator in Peru?

Nothing happens to you criminally — that liability sits with the operator under Penal Code Article 243-C. But practically, you risk losing pending commissions if the operator’s payment processing or license gets pulled, having your links blocked alongside the operator’s domain, and damaging your standing with any network that finds unlicensed Peru offers in your traffic.