New bet

3 February 2020 By Katrina Hamlin Follow @KatrinaHamlin

Mobile payments quintupled in the gambling hub in 2020, and digital currency might be introduced soon, helping watchdogs monitor money flows. Players might not like that idea, especially wealthy clients and tax dodgers. VIP haunts like Galaxy and Wynn are particularly exposed.

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Gambling revenue in Macau in January dropped 63.7% from a year earlier as the world's biggest casino hub struggled to boost visitors from its key market of mainland China, according to official data released Feb. 1.

Macau’s gambling regulator, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau, denied that it had approached casino operators to discuss the possibility of using China’s digital yuan to buy chips after a Dec. 2 report from Bloomberg cited sources suggesting it would experiment with the digital currency.

In August, China’s Ministry of Commerce said that it would run a pilot scheme to test the digital yuan in Macau and elsewhere in the country.

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