How Ukraine is building a real-time data system to regulate its gambling market

The State Online Gambling Monitoring System is the first state IT system in Ukraine to collect and process real-time transactional data from the gambling market.  

It provides the government with comprehensive information about market operations, enables transparent monitoring of tax compliance, and establishes clear rules for businesses.  

Designed to handle marketplace-scale workloads, the system will be able to process up to 100,000 transactions per second, automatically recording bets, payouts, refunds, and other financial transactions.  

Ukrainian govtech company, Kitsoft, developed the first stage of the system for Ukraine’s gambling regulator, PlayCity. The project was delivered within a short timeframe of 2.5 months. 

The first stage has been developed, tested, and launched in pilot operation, providing a foundation for the system's further development. 

How the transformation of the market began 

Until 2025, gambling market regulation in Ukraine needed to be modernised. The government lacked a digital tool for effectively monitoring operators' activities.  

Data on bets, winnings, refunds, and actual business volumes was collected in a fragmented manner, while monitoring often relied on reports, inspections, and manual processes. 

In March 2025, the Cabinet of Ministers established the state agency, PlayCity, a new authority responsible for gambling and lottery policy.  

Its responsibilities include online market monitoring, transparent licensing, identifying illegal casinos, overseeing lotteries, protecting players' rights, and maintaining registers. 

For these changes to work in practice rather than remain on paper, the government needed a technological foundation.  

This marked the beginning of the development of the State Online Gambling Monitoring System.

The State Online Gambling Monitoring System has become one of Ukraine's most complex state IT solutions.

The system processes millions of transactions every minute and marks a step toward data-driven regulation, where decisions are based on accurate data,” says David Hlazkov, Business Analyst on the project. 

Low-code platform as the foundation 

The system was built on Liquio, a low-code platform developed by Kitsoft.  

Its architecture made it possible to design the system for nationwide scale from the outset: it is designed to process up to 100,000 transactions per second.

Liquio supports integration with artificial intelligence (AI) and is included in the international GovStack catalog as a recommended technology for building digital government services.  

Through its open-source approach, solutions built on Liquio can be further developed by different teams and adapted to evolving needs.  

This helps ensure the stability and long-term development of digital systems while maintaining control over critical services. 

The Diia portal, Ukraine's main digital government service, was also built on Liquio. The platform has also been used to develop other high-load systems. 

Architecture of the State Online Gambling Monitoring System 

Electronic portals: how the market connects 

The system includes portals for three groups of users: 

• gambling operators; 
• the PlayCity state agency; 
• the State Tax Service of Ukraine. 
   

Through the gambling operator portal, users can: 

• register with the State Online Gambling Monitoring System; 

• view information about their gambling establishments, websites, and mobile applications; 

• view information about their gambling equipment; 

• manage representatives; 

• create and deactivate access keys for transmitting operational data to the online system. 

The system clearly defines user roles, ensuring that each user has access only to the functions relevant to them.  

Users access the electronic portals using a qualified electronic signature (QES). 

The PlayCity and State Tax Service portals support dozens of authorised users, while the market side includes more than 1,000 gambling operator accounts. 

Real-time transaction processing 

The State Online Gambling Monitoring System integrates with gambling operators' systems through application programming interfaces (APIs).  

Each operation is transmitted as a separate transaction, validated for accuracy, and recorded in the system. 

The system is currently receiving, recording, and analysing test data on key gambling operations: 

• placing bets; 
• paying out winnings; 
• refunding bets; 
• topping up balances; 
• making payments. 

The State Online Gambling Monitoring System anonymises user activity and the movement of their funds.  

The system works exclusively with bets and financial transactions that have already taken place and have been transmitted by operators. 

The market in numbers: what the government can see 

The first stage includes 11 analytical reports grouped into four categories: operational, regulatory, analytical, and financial. They enable government authorities to monitor: 

• betting and payout volumes; 

• operators' gross gaming revenue; 

• player activity by type of gambling; 

• the overall system performance. 
   

Registers: all data in one system 

The State Online Gambling Monitoring System includes the Information and Communication System “Registers”. It brings together data on: 

• casinos; 
• online casinos; 
• betting operations; 
• gaming machine halls; 
• online poker. 

The registers contain information on licenses, operators, gambling establishments, equipment, websites, and mobile applications.

Data protection 

The State Online Gambling Monitoring System was designed in accordance with personal data protection requirements. 

The system does not store players' personal data in an open form. Instead, it automatically converts this data into special identifiers (hashes) that cannot be used to identify an individual.  

However, where there is a legal basis, such as a court decision, the State Tax Service or PlayCity can cross-reference their data with the identifiers in the system and obtain information about a specific case only.  

This makes it possible to verify relevant transactions without exposing the personal data of all users. 

How the team worked 

A cross-functional Kitsoft team worked on the first stage of the State Online Gambling Monitoring System, including developers, business analysts, project managers, designers, and cybersecurity specialists. 

"For the development of the State Online Gambling Monitoring System, we brought together key Kitsoft specialists with unique experience and deep expertise in building state digital systems.

"Using Liquio enables us to deliver the project in line with international standards, particularly in security and data protection,” says Oleksandr Iefremov, CEO of Kitsoft. 

The Kitsoft and PlayCity teams worked in close collaboration, holding joint discussions, creating prototypes, modeling regulatory scenarios, and conducting load testing. 

This approach made it possible to create not just a standalone service in a short period of time, but the foundation of state digital infrastructure for regulating the gambling market. 

What is already working and how the system is evolving 

The first stage of the State Online Gambling Monitoring System is operating in pilot mode and processing real data.  

As of August 2026, 28 out of 31 licensed gambling operators have been integrated into the system. 

The first stage of the system automatically collects data on bets, winnings payouts, refunds, and other financial transactions. 

Kitsoft is now beginning development of the second stage of the system.  

The new stage will expand monitoring beyond financial transactions to include processes within the game itself — from placing a bet to the game result and payout. 

The second stage will include: 

• recording game results and operations involving gambling substitutes for the hryvnia; 
• monitoring the operation and parameters of gambling equipment; 
• creating dedicated electronic portals for the Ministry of Finance, the National Bank of Ukraine, and the State Financial Monitoring Service, with access to designated data, analytical reports, and monitoring tools; 
• expanding the analytics of the State Online Gambling Monitoring System with new operational, regulatory, analytical, and financial reports, as well as interactive dashboards; 
• creating anonymised open datasets on the gambling market for subsequent publication on the state open data portal; 
• expanding integrations with government information systems; 
• monitoring compliance with responsible gambling principles. 

The development and commissioning of the second stage is planned for completion in 2026.  

Once launched, the government will be able to gain a comprehensive view of the legal gambling market — from financial transactions to game results.