Czechia’s Prediction-Market Blocks Have Separate Website and Payment Triggers

Czechia’s Ministry of Finance has clarified how payment blocking sits beside its prediction-market website blocks. Payment providers may not carry out transactions to or from a payment account named on the list of unauthorised internet games, it told Vultax on 23 October 2026. That duty already follows from the Gambling Act; the ministry does not need to instruct each provider individually.

The distinction is the account entry. The reply does not name a payment account for Polymarket or Kalshi, or say which of their transactions has been blocked. It should not be read as an account-level finding about either platform simply because their websites appear on the blacklist.

The ministry’s public list recorded polymarket.com on 13 July and kalshi.com on 30 September 2026. Vultax reported the Kalshi listing and the ministry’s earlier answers in October. The new reply moves the record beyond the listing: it covers objections, the payment duty and supervision.

Asked whether either operator had objected or appealed since the two listings, the press office answered that neither had raised an objection or lodged an appeal. Filip Běhal of the ministry’s Public Relations and Communications Department supplied the answers in Czech; the English account here is Vultax’s translation.

The earlier 2 October response explained that the ministry first publishes its intention to add a website, allowing an operator fifteen days to object. Once entered, internet providers must prevent access no later than the fifteenth day, using DNS blocking. For kalshi.com’s 30 September entry, the stated date was 15 October.

The new answer concerns the ministry’s record as of 23 October. It does not give a Czech-network test result, and Vultax has not independently searched every possible court filing. A procedural update and a measurement of whether the block is applied remain different pieces of evidence.

The answer about payment providers describes a standing statutory obligation tied to listed accounts. It does not say that providers need a fresh individual notice for each platform, nor does it supply a list of affected accounts. That is why Vultax records the website entries and the payment-account question separately.

Asked whether providers’ application of the block is checked, the ministry said it and, especially, the Customs Administration carry out checks on their own initiative and examine reports from the public. Customs is the primary supervisory authority, it said. Its examples included complaints from players who participated in illegal gambling and were defrauded.

That describes oversight, but does not set out a reproducible technical method for testing a domain across internet providers. Vultax’s published OONI dataset, covering 21 July to 19 October, contains no Czech tests of either domain. The new reply does not change that measurement gap.

The ministry also said it welcomes relevant sources of information that help combat illegal gambling. That is an openness to information, not a commission, endorsement or customer relationship with Vultax.

Czechia’s answer is useful beside Latvia’s two separate lists: blocked websites and operators subject to payment restrictions. The mechanisms differ between jurisdictions, so a country label such as “blocked” can conceal the thing a reader most needs to know: what is blocked, by whom, from when, and under which document.

The Czech country record now includes the 23 October procedural and payment-duty clarification. On the interactive Europe map, the authority-action layer shows source-backed entries; the access layer shows only countries with observations in the stated dataset. An unmeasured country is not treated as accessible or permitted.

Read the original Czech answers and Vultax’s questions, received 23 October 2026 (text). The transcript retains the substantive questions and answers, with signature contact details and the earlier quoted chain omitted.

The Ministry’s blocking-information page is the official entry point for the published list and notices. The website dates in this report come from the 30 September version of the list and the ministry’s earlier written explanation. The payment paragraph is an account of the ministry’s new answer, not an independent account-level audit.