(AsiaGameHub) –   Ukraine’s PlayCity has rolled out the pilot stage of the state-operated Online Monitoring System (DSOM), which will track activities of both players and operators across the nation’s licensed gambling market. 

In an update published this week, the regulator stated that the initiative is designed to strengthen regulatory oversight and improve tax compliance within the country’s licensed gambling sector. 

To date, 11 licensed gambling operators have been onboarded to the platform as part of the trial run. This represents a key step toward the digital transformation of gambling industry supervision.

DSOM is a centralised transaction-monitoring platform built to capture and aggregate betting activities across the country’s regulated gambling landscape in near-real time. 

The system will log key activities, including placed bets, winnings and payouts, as separate, tamper-proof transactions, each allocated a unique identification code.

What is DSOM and why it is important

The platform will specifically focus on transactional data, with a processing capacity of up to 10,000 transactions per second. While it records each user’s in-game transactions, authorities confirmed the system does not collect players’ personal information, nor does it track funds after they leave the gaming ecosystem.

The regulator noted that its objectives for the platform include obtaining a full operational overview of the market. It also aims to boost tax compliance and enable data-backed supervision. 

PlayCity stated that the State Tax Service will be granted access to the monitored data to help it accurately calculate gross gaming revenue (GGR) and associated taxes, including the military levy and personal income tax.

Notably, DSOM’s architecture will block overwriting of submitted transaction records to guarantee data integrity. It comes with two separate interfaces: an internal interface for use by state regulatory bodies, and an external one for gambling operators. 

New operators will get access to DSOM upon securing a gambling licence, and their details will be registered within one working day. 

Ukraine legalised gambling in 2020. PlayCity was named the designated state agency responsible for regulating gambling and lotteries after policy functions were transferred to the Ministry of Digital Transformation. Its predecessor, the Commission for the Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries (KRAIL), was disbanded in April 2024, following the regulator’s repeated failure to issue gambling licences in a timely manner.  

This pilot system was launched just one month after PlayCity unveiled a new online complaints platform designed to speed up public reporting of illegal gambling advertising. 

On Monday, a municipal court in Kyiv convicted three men of running an illegal gambling operation masked as a legitimate commercial business.