Jakarta. The Communication and Informatics Ministry has issued a regulation capping cellphone credit balance transfers at Rp 1 million ($62) per day as part of an ongoing crackdown on online gambling.

Communication and Informatics Minister Budi Arie Setiadi said on Thursday that online gamblers frequently use their cellphone credit balances for transactions, sometimes reaching up to Rp 100 million ($6,200) or even Rp 2 billion ($123,353) per user.

"We issued the regulation mandating cellular operators to limit transfers to Rp 1 million per day. They have announced this limitation from the ministry to prevent their platforms from being used for gambling transactions,” Budi said at his office in Jakarta.

Budi also mentioned that the government plans to cut off access to free virtual private network (VPN) services to further restrict the operations of gambling websites and apps in the country.

While thousands of gambling websites, apps, and promotional content have been taken down in recent months, free VPN services still allow internet users to access websites based in foreign countries.

“We continue to adopt serious measures to restrict public access to online gambling apps in our digital space,” Budi said.

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