Vietnamese gambling regulators have already notified the gambling operators that provide their products and services on the Vietnamese territory to take actions towards obtaining licenses. Otherwise, they risk being imposed heavy fines for every violation of the rules and severe penalties for providing gambling services on unregulated markets.
Those gambling operators that attempt to disregard the announcement and continue working without a license will be supposed to pay a fine that varies between VND50 million and VND70 million or $2,400 and $3,500.
In order to obtain a license, every provider has to go through thorough checking procedures. Once the Vietnamese gambling regulators scrutinize the design, content, and the script of every single game an operator offers, the latter might be granted a license. However, that is not the only requirement of the authorities. Apart from licenses, the gambling providers also need a registration certificate that enables them to freely provide Internet gambling activities on Vietnamese soil. Furthermore, additional agreements for featuring particular games in electronic format are needed as well.
The Ministry of Information and Communications allowed the operators to register their domains, provided that they succeed in convincing the regulators that they are capable of providing enough staff for all the operations as well as sufficient funds for covering all the financial expenses.
The operators, which provide the players with products that require the participants to interact with each other in order to play electronic games, will have to acquire business registration certificates. They are not supposed to go through the script and design checking procedures, but they will be obliged to carry out the registration process and present their area of operation to the gaming authorities.
The above-mentioned requirements are also valid for the companies which offer games that need to be downloaded from the Internet and do not involve any interaction between players.
Every license issued will be valid for a different period of time, depending on what the local gaming regulator decides. The maximum period of validity is 10 years.
Apart from the fines for violating the laws, the authorities have prepared even more severe ones to those operators that provide their services without a permission. Those, whose licenses have expired, will also be penalized.
Earlier this month, Vietnam’s Ministry of Finance announced its plans to impose a 10% consumption tax to certain online games that might cause addiction. Thus, a total of VND650 billion or US$30.59 million might be contributed to the country’s coffers on an annual basis.
