Anjouan casino licence and the UK player in 2026: what the offshore stamp does and does not cover

Updated September 2026

Licensed

Available in GB

Fast payouts

18+ Only

An Anjouan licence, on its own, is not enough to take a UK player’s deposit lawfully. That sentence is the entire page in one line, and the rest of it is the explanation — what the Anjouan stamp actually authorises, what protections it does not bring with it, and what a UK resident gives up when they choose an offshore-licensed site over one holding a Gambling Commission licence. Most of what follows is comparison: a regulated UK market against an offshore one, the protections that attach to one and not the other, and the small handful of cases where an Anjouan licence can still be the right pick for a specific reader. None of this is advertisement for any operator named on the way through. Each brand that appears is described for what it is — a licensed business or an unlicensed one — and never as a place to play.

Data current as of 23 September 2026, cross-referenced against the Gambling Commission’s public register of gambling businesses.

How a UK remote casino licence actually works in 2026

The Gambling Commission has been the regulator for the British market since the Gambling Act 2005 received royal assent on 7 April 2005. Its remit covers Great Britain — England, Scotland and Wales — but not Northern Ireland. A casino, betting or bingo site that wants to take a deposit from a customer sitting in Great Britain needs a Commission operating licence, whatever country the operator itself is based in. That requirement arrived on 1 December 2014 with the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014, which closed the previous loophole under which EEA, Gibraltar and a short “white list” of jurisdictions — Alderney, the Isle of Man, Tasmania, Antigua and Barbuda — could serve British customers on the strength of their home authorisation alone. A Maltese licence, a Curaçao licence, an Anjouan licence: none of these stand in for a Commission licence once a British player is in the picture.

Three consequences follow. First, an operator running on an offshore licence alone and taking UK deposits is committing a criminal offence under section 33 of the Gambling Act 2005 — not a civil breach, not a regulatory nudge. Second, the Commission can and does disrupt such sites: cease-and-desist notices, search-engine delisting, payment and hosting referrals. It has no power to block sites at ISP level, which is why some keep appearing. Third, the penalty does not land on the player; what the player loses on an unlicensed site is protection — no GAMSTOP, no Commission complaints route, no approved ADR.

The proof a brand holds a Commission licence sits in the public register of gambling businesses. On 18 September 2026 it listed 139 businesses holding an active remote casino operating licence. Each domain in the register is tied back to the licence account that runs it, with a status of Active, Inactive or White Label; on the same date the register held 1065 active and 361 white-label domain entries. A white-label site is one that trades under another company’s licence — Virgin Games, for instance, runs on Gamesys Operations Limited’s licence 038905-R-319430-022 rather than its own. A licence number itself has the form account-R-number-suffix, where the leading six digits repeat the licence holder’s account number and the “R” marks a remote, online, licence.

That register is the test. Anything a brand claims about its UK status reduces to a single question: is its domain on the register, against the right licence, in Active or White Label status? If the answer is no, the brand is not licensed to take a UK deposit, no matter what other authorisation it holds.

The Anjouan licence, from island statute to “Internet Gaming Regulatory Authority”

Anjouan is the easternmost island of the Comoros archipelago in the south-western Indian Ocean, an autonomous part of the Union of the Comoros with its capital at Mutsamudu. The Anjouan Offshore Finance Authority was established in 2002 to promote the island as an offshore financial centre and tax haven. The Central Bank of Comoros stated in 2014 that no licence had been delivered for offshore financial activities on Anjouan and that it does not recognise licences issued by that Authority. On the gaming side, Anjouan Gaming, styled the “Internet Gaming Regulatory Authority”, operates under the Anjouan Offshore Finance Authority and issues separate B2C and B2B internet gaming licences.

The geographic context matters because it sits in tension with the regulatory one. GIABA’s May 2024 mutual evaluation report on the Union of the Comoros, based on an on-site visit in July 2023, records that gambling is prohibited under the Comorian Penal Code. An “Internet Gaming Regulatory Authority” issuing gaming licences from within a jurisdiction whose own Penal Code prohibits gambling is the kind of detail a reader should weigh against the marketing copy on the licence page.

What the Anjouan stamp actually authorises, in operational terms, is permission from one private regulator to run an online gaming business from that jurisdiction. It does not authorise the operator to take deposits from players in Great Britain. That permission comes from the Gambling Commission, and it is a separate, additional requirement under the 2014 Act. The two are not interchangeable, and neither one covers the other’s gaps.

The UK protections that do not travel with an offshore licence

A licensed UK site is required, by the terms of its operating licence and the LCCP social responsibility code, to put a specific set of protections around a customer. An Anjouan-licensed site is not. The list below is not a wishlist; each item is a condition that attaches to a Commission licence and falls away on one that is not.

GAMSTOP, the national online self-exclusion scheme, has been a mandatory condition of every online operating licence since 31 March 2020. Self-exclusion runs for six months, one year or five years, and cannot be cancelled early. For a player who has self-excluded and is trying to keep that resolution, a Commission-licensed site will block the attempt; an offshore site that does not honour GAMSTOP has no such obligation, and the common behaviour is to accept the deposit. The page on player wellbeing covers this in more depth further down, but the short version is that a self-exclusion registered with GAMSTOP applies at licensed UK sites only.

Stake and wagering-requirement caps. Online slots carry a maximum stake per game cycle: £5 for players aged 25 and over from 9 April 2025, and £2 for 18-24-year-olds from 21 May 2025. A game cycle is a single spin, not a session, so the cap binds per spin rather than per hour. Since 19 December 2025 wagering requirements on bonuses have been capped at 10x and mixed-product bonuses — bet on sport, get casino spins — have been banned. None of these caps is statutorily binding on an offshore site. An Anjouan-licensed casino can offer a £20 spin, a 60x wagering requirement, or a sports-to-slots bundle; the Commission’s regulatory ceiling does not follow the licence across the water.

Age and identity verification. Since 7 May 2019, a Commission-licensed site must verify a customer’s name, address and date of birth before the first deposit and before any play. The minimum age is 18. An Anjouan-licensed site is subject to its own regulator’s KYC rules, which vary, and the practical answer for a UK player is that the ID step may happen later, may happen at withdrawal, or may not happen at all on the path to a first deposit. The case for ID being absent is one a marketing page sometimes makes in the offshore world; the section on identity checks returns to it.

Financial vulnerability checks. From 28 February 2025, a licensed site runs a check at £150 net deposits in a rolling 30 days using public data only, and prompts the customer to set a financial limit before the first deposit. From 31 October 2025 that prompt before the first deposit is mandatory. Offshore sites do not run these checks. A player who wants the operator to ask, before the wallet is opened, whether their budget is sensible is choosing between a regime that requires it and one that does not.

Auto-play, spin speed and “losses disguised as wins”. Since 31 October 2021 a licensed UK slot cannot auto-play, cannot spin faster than one cycle every 2.5 seconds, and cannot display a spin as a win when the spin returned less than the stake. These are product-level rules, policed by Remote Technical Standards and tested in audit. Offshore sites are not subject to them.

Credit cards. Banned for gambling since 14 April 2020 at any Commission-licensed operator, including credit cards routed through e-wallets. The rule closes a route a player might otherwise use to borrow their way into a session. Offshore-licensed sites typically still take credit cards, because the rule is a UK one and does not bind them.

Anonymous play. Not possible at a licensed UK site, because the ID check happens before the first deposit. Possible to a degree at an offshore site, because the KYC step is at the operator’s discretion and at the regulator’s terms, not at the Commission’s.

Player dispute route. A complaint at a Commission-licensed site that cannot be resolved by the operator goes to an approved ADR — typically IBAS — and from there to the Commission itself. An Anjouan-licensed site has no Commission complaints path, because the Commission is not its regulator. Dispute resolution is whatever the operator’s T&Cs and the Anjouan regulator provide, with the practical reality that an offshore ADR route is harder to access and slower to produce a result.

Tax. The operator-side point is straightforward: a Commission-licensed operator pays Remote Gaming Duty, raised from 21% to 40% from 1 April 2026, on gross gambling yield from GB customers. The player-side point is simpler still: there is no UK tax on gambling winnings, regardless of where the site is licensed.

Choosing between an Anjouan-licensed site and a Commission-licensed one

The decision a UK reader faces is not “Anjouan or Commission” in the abstract; it is whether the protections the Commission attaches are worth more to them than whatever the offshore site is offering in return — usually a larger bonus, looser stake limits, fewer KYC steps, and a payment method a UK-licensed site cannot take. Most readers will conclude the protections are worth more, and the rest of this section is for the readers who might not.

A player who has self-excluded via GAMSTOP and is choosing between routes to keep that resolution has a clear answer: stay with Commission-licensed sites. The block is built into the licence; the offshore site has no obligation to honour it and a commercial reason not to.

A player who is on a tight stake budget and wants the Commission’s £2 / £5 spin cap has a similar answer. The cap is statutory, the offshore site is not bound by it, and the same slot will accept a much larger stake on an Anjouan licence. The reader who benefits from the cap is the one the cap was written for.

A player who wants the Commission’s 10x wagering cap and the end of mixed-product bonuses has, again, a similar answer. The cap landed on 19 December 2025 for a reason: the bonus structures it shut down were extracting more from players than the new ceiling permits. An offshore site has no such ceiling and is free to write whatever terms it likes.

A player who has a complaint that escalates past the operator’s own customer service has, again, a similar answer. IBAS and the Commission together give a UK player a route that ends in a regulator with the power to act. An Anjouan-licensed site gives a UK player the Anjouan regulator and whatever ADR the operator’s terms point to, neither of which carries the same weight for a British customer.

The reader for whom an offshore site can still make sense is narrower than the marketing suggests. It is a player who understands they are operating outside the British regulatory perimeter, who is not using self-exclusion as a tool, who does not need the stake or wagering caps to keep their play within a budget, who is comfortable handling a dispute without the Commission behind them, and who has weighed the Anjouan regulator’s own standing — a regulator that GIABA’s 2024 report places inside a jurisdiction whose Penal Code prohibits gambling — and decided it is enough for their purposes. That reader exists, but they are not the reader the offshore marketing page is written for, which is a more general one.

Player wellbeing: what changes when the regulator does not

The responsible-gaming shelf is where the difference between a Commission-licensed site and an Anjouan-licensed one shows up most sharply for the reader who needs the protection most. The same conditions that attach to the licence on the UK side — GAMSTOP, the financial vulnerability check at £150 net deposits in 30 days, the pre-deposit financial-limit prompt, the ID-and-age check at sign-up — fall away offshore. None of them is replaced by an equivalent on the Anjouan side; they are simply not required.

GAMSTOP deserves its own paragraph. The scheme is a single national self-exclusion register, free to use, and a Commission-licensed operator checks it before allowing a new account to deposit. The minimum exclusion period is six months. A player who has self-excluded and then finds themselves at an offshore-licensed site has stepped outside the only mechanism that, in practice, would have stopped them. The site has not broken the law in doing so, because GAMSTOP is not its legal obligation. The mechanism just does not reach.

The financial vulnerability check works because the data is matched automatically at the point of deposit. A player crossing the £150 net-deposits-in-30-days threshold triggers a check using public data only, and the operator is required to act on the result. Offshore operators are not running this check, which means the early signal a UK-licensed site catches is being missed. The National Gambling Helpline (GamCare) and GambleAware are still available as routes to help — the page on player wellbeing returns to those further down — but the operator side of the safety net has thinner rope.

The £2 / £5 spin cap and the 2.5-second minimum spin interval are also part of the wellbeing architecture. They constrain how fast a session can move and how much a single decision can cost. An offshore site has no equivalent cap and no equivalent interval. For a player who has decided that £5 a spin is what their budget can carry, the offshore site is a different product — same slot, higher ceiling — and the difference matters.

The pre-deposit financial-limit prompt, mandatory from 31 October 2025, is the operator asking the customer, before the first deposit, whether they want to set a deposit ceiling. It is not a hard ceiling imposed by the regulator; it is a friction step that nudges a customer towards a decision. An offshore site does not run it. The decision the prompt was designed to provoke does not happen.

Anonymous play is a particular point. A Commission-licensed site verifies name, address and date of birth before the first deposit and before any play. An Anjouan-licensed site may verify at deposit, may verify at withdrawal, may verify never. For a player who wants anonymity as a feature, the offshore route is the only one that delivers it. For a player who has chosen anonymity because they want fewer friction points before spending, the absence of a verification step is doing the same work the prompt is meant to undo. The page on identity checks returns to this — the case for and against ID-before-deposit is not the same case as the case for and against anonymity as a feature.

Comparing the operators on the register, and what the comparison shows

The ten operators below are all on the Gambling Commission’s public register as GB-licensed remote casino operators. None of them is licensed in Anjouan; the Anjouan-licensed operators form a separate, offshore, set that the Commission does not list because it has no jurisdiction over them. The table below shows the licensed set, and the prose around it explains what the comparison actually shows.

The pattern the table shows is structural rather than competitive. Nine of the ten operate as active domains — their domain is registered against their own licence account. One, Virgin Games, sits as a white-label domain under Gamesys Operations Limited’s licence. Both are legitimate Commission licences; the white-label status tells the reader that Virgin Games is trading on a host operator’s authorisation rather than its own, which is a normal arrangement in the British market and not a flag against the brand. The licence numbers all follow the same account-R-number-suffix format, with the leading six digits repeating the account number and the “R” marking the licence as remote.

The same register also exposes the duplication that the marketing pages sometimes obscure. Several brands can sit under one licence account, and a few licence accounts sit under one parent group. Ladbrokes, Coral and Gala Bingo all run under LC International Limited; the reader who sees three different brand websites is looking at three different front doors onto one operator. The Commission register is the place to check which brand sits on which licence, because the brand pages do not always volunteer the link.

The comparison the table does not show is between these ten and an Anjouan-licensed set, because that is not a comparison the Commission can run. The Anjouan-licensed sites are not on the register, by definition; if they were, they would be Commission-licensed. The point of the table is to give the reader a list of the licensed alternative — names they can check on the register, with the licence numbers to check them against — rather than a head-to-head with the offshore set.

Paddy Power

Paddy Power is listed on the Gambling Commission register as an active domain of account 39411, PPB Games Limited, which holds the active remote casino operating licence 039411-R-319335-010. The brand is one of the longer-established names on the British market and runs under a Commission licence with no white-label caveat. For a player comparing the licensed set, it sits in the mainstream tier — a brand whose licence status the register confirms directly and whose name the reader will recognise. Paddy Power is the kind of brand a player uses as a reference point: the licensed alternative against which an offshore offer is implicitly being pitched.

Unibet

Unibet runs at the Unibet website on Platinum Gaming Limited’s licence 045322-R-324275-019, account 45322, appearing on the register as an active domain. The .co.uk domain is the registered one for the British market, distinct from the global Unibet site, and that distinction matters: a UK player clicking through to the latter is on a different licence path. The Commission’s register is the place to confirm which domain sits on which licence. Unibet’s profile is mainstream European operator with a separate UK-facing site, and its protections are the Commission’s rather than its own.

Sky Vegas

Sky Vegas is on the register as an active domain of account 65519, Bonne Terre Gaming Limited, which holds the active remote casino operating licence 065519-R-339675-002. Sky Vegas is the casino product of the broader Sky Betting and Gaming business; the licence account is specific to the casino operation. The reader who is checking the licence sees the link from Sky Vegas to the Bonne Terre Gaming Limited account on the register, and the licence number carries through. Sky Vegas sits on the standard Commission protections, including GAMSTOP and the stake and wagering caps that apply from 2025.

kwiff

kwiff runs at the kwiff website on Eaton Gate Gaming Limited’s licence 044448-R-323408-017, account 44448, and operates under an active domain status on the register. The brand has built its profile around a “surprise” stake feature — odds or bonus multipliers that vary from one bet to the next — which is product-side and sits on top of the Commission’s standard licence conditions. The licence itself is the same form as any other, and the protections that come with it — GAMSTOP, the £2 / £5 spin cap where it applies, the 10x wagering ceiling on bonuses from 19 December 2025 — apply unchanged. The reader who picks kwiff on product and finds the protections are the Commission’s is getting the usual UK package by way of a less usual product.

bet365

bet365 is listed as an active domain of account 55149, Hillside (UK Gaming) ENC, holding the active remote casino operating licence 055149-R-331499-004. The licence-holder name includes “ENC”, which stands for European Narrative Company or equivalent — bet365’s UK-facing entity has historically been a non-UK corporate vehicle operating under a Commission licence, and the structure is normal for a large international operator. The licence is the same form as any other Commission licence and the protections are the Commission’s standard set. bet365 sits in the tier of brands the reader uses as a benchmark for scale rather than for any single product feature.

MrQ

MrQ runs at the MrQ website on Tek Fox Ltd’s licence 060629-R-337532-004, account 60629, which the register records as an active domain. The brand has built its profile on a no-wagering-requirement model — bonuses that pay out as cash rather than as bonus funds with a turnover multiplier — which made it one of the higher-profile British brands before the 19 December 2025 wagering cap landed. With the 10x cap now binding, MrQ sits inside the new ceiling rather than above it; the no-wagering approach is now an alternative within the cap rather than a workaround around it. The Commission’s protections otherwise apply unchanged.

Midnite

Midnite runs at the Midnite website on Dribble Media Limited’s licence 042647-R-321653-022, account 42647, and is listed on the register as an active domain. Midnite is one of the newer entrants to the Commission register; the brand has built its profile around a sports-and-casino combination, with the casino product sitting alongside a sportsbook. The mixed-product bonus ban from 19 December 2025 closes the bundling structure that a combined sportsbook-and-casino brand might otherwise offer, which is a real product-level change rather than a marketing one. The licence is a standard Commission licence and the protections apply.

Virgin Games

Virgin Games is listed on the register as a white-label domain of account 38905, Gamesys Operations Limited, holding the active remote casino operating licence 038905-R-319430-022. White-label status means Virgin Games trades under Gamesys Operations Limited’s licence rather than its own. The arrangement is normal in the British market and the Commission’s protections attach to the licence rather than to the brand; the player at Virgin Games is, in regulatory terms, a Gamesys customer. The brand-name licensing arrangement is a marketing structure; the protection is the licence’s, which is Gamesys Operations Limited’s.

BetVictor

BetVictor runs at the BetVictor website on BV Gaming Limited’s licence 039576-R-319370-028, account 39576, and is listed on the register as an active domain. BetVictor is one of the longer-established British-facing brands and sits in the mainstream tier. The Commission’s protections apply unchanged, including the 10x wagering cap and the GAMSTOP requirement. The brand’s product profile is mainstream online casino and sportsbook, with the casino product sitting under the same licence as the sportsbook; the mixed-product bonus ban applies to anything the operator might otherwise bundle.

Grosvenor Casinos

Grosvenor Casinos runs at the Grosvenor Casinos website on Rank Interactive (Gibraltar) Limited’s licence 057924-R-334666-005, account 57924, and is listed on the register as an active domain. The licence-holder is Rank Interactive (Gibraltar) Limited, which sits within the Rank Group — the same group that runs the Grosvenor land-based casino estate. The “Gibraltar” in the licence-holder name is the corporate seat, not a substitute for the Commission licence: the operator still holds a Commission licence to take GB customers, which is the relevant authorisation. Grosvenor Casinos is the casino-brand of a group with both retail and online operations, and the protections on the online site are the Commission’s standard set.

Worked example: the 10x wagering cap in practice

Since 19 December 2025, wagering requirements on bonuses at Commission-licensed sites have been capped at 10x. The cap is the figure a player works against when they weigh a bonus offer: required turnover is the bonus amount times the wagering factor, and at a 10x cap the maximum required turnover is 10 times the bonus. For a £100 bonus the maximum required turnover is £1,000; for a £50 bonus, £500; for a £20 bonus, £200. The cap is a ceiling, not a target — most offers sit below it — but it is the figure a player checks against when an offer arrives.

A worked example for a £100 bonus at the cap: required turnover is £1,000. At a £5 stake per spin — the maximum for a player aged 25 or over from 9 April 2025 — that is 200 spins. At a £2 stake per spin — the maximum for a player aged 18-24 from 21 May 2025 — that is 500 spins. At the minimum spin interval of 2.5 seconds, 500 spins takes 1,250 seconds, which is 20 minutes and 50 seconds of continuous play. The bonus can be cleared in under 21 minutes of play.

The same offer at the offshore site, where the 10x cap does not bind, can carry a 40x or 60x wagering factor. £100 at 40x is £4,000 of required turnover — 800 spins at £5, 2,000 spins at £2, and 33 minutes 20 seconds or 83 minutes 20 seconds at the 2.5-second minimum. £100 at 60x is £6,000 — 1,200 spins at £5, 2,500 spins at £2. The cap changes the time on task from a small fraction of an hour to most of an hour or more. The cap does not zero out the bonus; it caps how much of the player’s time and turnover the bonus can demand before it pays out.

The following analysis compares the two bonus regimes: a 10x ceiling against a market that has historically offered 40x or higher offshore. The cap binds at Commission-licensed sites and does not bind at Anjouan-licensed sites, and the difference between the two regimes is the difference between a bonus cleared in minutes and one cleared in an hour or more. For a player who reads a bonus offer in terms of the time it costs to clear, that is the comparison that matters.

What a UK player stands to lose on an Anjouan-licensed site

The list is short and specific because the rights and protections are short and specific. They are also the rights a UK player is most likely to want when something goes wrong.

A complaint that an operator refuses to pay out. At a Commission-licensed site, the route is operator → IBAS → Commission. At an Anjouan-licensed site the route is operator → whatever ADR the T&Cs name → whatever the Anjouan regulator does. The Commission’s route has the regulator at the back of it; the Anjouan route does not. For a player who has been asked to wait months for a withdrawal with no resolution, the difference is the difference between a regulator with enforcement power and a regulator whose enforcement record the player can look up.

A self-exclusion registered with GAMSTOP. At a Commission-licensed site the exclusion applies and the operator blocks the deposit. At an Anjouan-licensed site the exclusion does not apply, because the operator is not on GAMSTOP. For a player who has self-excluded and is trying to keep that resolution, the choice of site is the choice of whether the resolution holds.

A stake cap. The £2 / £5 cap is statutory at Commission-licensed sites. An Anjouan-licensed site has no such cap. For a player whose budget is built around the cap, the offshore site is a different product.

A wagering cap. The 10x cap is statutory at Commission-licensed sites from 19 December 2025. An Anjouan-licensed site has no such cap.

A financial vulnerability check at £150 net deposits in 30 days. Required at Commission-licensed sites from 28 February 2025. Not required at Anjouan-licensed sites.

A pre-deposit financial-limit prompt. Required at Commission-licensed sites from 31 October 2025. Not required at Anjouan-licensed sites.

An ID and age check before the first deposit. Required at Commission-licensed sites since 7 May 2019. May or may not happen at an Anjouan-licensed site, at the operator’s discretion.

A credit-card ban. In force at Commission-licensed sites since 14 April 2020. Not in force at Anjouan-licensed sites.

None of these is theoretical. Each one is a piece of consumer protection that the Commission’s regime attaches to the licence and that the Anjouan regime does not. A player who chooses an Anjouan-licensed site is choosing to give up each of them. That is the page’s working answer to the question of what an Anjouan licence costs a UK player: not in fees, not in tax, but in the protections that are no longer attached once the licence is offshore.

Where the licensed alternative sits, and what it offers

A reader who has read this far and decided the protections are worth having has, in the comparison table above, a list of ten Commission-licensed brands to consider. None of them is an Anjouan-licensed operator; the table is the licensed set, not a head-to-head with the offshore set. The reader who wants to compare a specific offshore site against a specific licensed alternative picks the licensed brand whose product matches what they were looking at offshore, then checks the licence on the register against the brand’s own claims.

The licensed set is not homogeneous. The brands range from long-established names — Paddy Power, BetVictor, Grosvenor Casinos — to newer entrants — Midnite, MrQ — and the product profiles range from mainstream casino-and-sportsbook to specialist slots-and-bingo. The licence is the same form for all of them; the product is different. The reader who is choosing on product, with the protections as a given, is choosing within a set whose floor is the Commission’s full regime.

The table does not rank. The plan calls it a comparison, not a leaderboard, and the columns it carries — brand, licence holder and GB remote casino licence, domain status, subject support — are what research backs. The reader who wants a ranking will not find one here, because the ten brands are not in competition in the way the offshore marketing pages are in competition with each other. They are in a regulatory cohort: same Commission licence form, same GAMSTOP, same stake and wagering caps, same ID and financial-vulnerability checks. Within that cohort, the comparison is on product.

What the Anjouan licence does authorise, and what it does not

To be precise about what the Anjouan stamp is, rather than what it is not, it authorises the holder to operate an online gaming business from Anjouan under the rules of the Anjouan Offshore Finance Authority, with the gaming side administered by Anjouan Gaming styled as the Internet Gaming Regulatory Authority. It issues separate B2C and B2B internet gaming licences. The licence is a real document issued by a real body, and an operator holding one is regulated by that body to the extent the body regulates. What it does not authorise is the taking of UK customer deposits. The two are different permissions, granted by different regulators, under different regimes. A player who has both permissions — an Anjouan licence and a Commission licence — is licensed in both jurisdictions. A player with one only is licensed for the jurisdiction of that licence and not for the other.

The marketing pages for Anjouan-licensed casinos sometimes describe the licence as covering a broad international customer base, which is true in the sense that Anjouan does not restrict the operator’s customer base to Anjouan itself. What the marketing pages do not always say is that the operator’s authority to take UK customers comes from the UK regulator, not from Anjouan, and that the Commission’s regime applies on top of the Anjouan regime for any UK-facing business. A player who treats the Anjouan licence as covering them because they are in the UK has misread what the licence covers.

Frequently asked questions

What does an Anjouan gambling licence actually authorise?

An Anjouan gambling licence authorises the holder to operate an online gaming business from Anjouan under the rules of the Anjouan Offshore Finance Authority, with the gaming side administered by Anjouan Gaming styled the Internet Gaming Regulatory Authority. It does not authorise the operator to take deposits from UK players; that permission comes from the Gambling Commission, separately, under the Gambling Act 2005 and the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014.

Are ID checks still carried out before a first deposit at an Anjouan-licensed site?

Not necessarily. A Commission-licensed site must verify name, address and date of birth before the first deposit and before any play, and has been required to since 7 May 2019. An Anjouan-licensed site is subject to its own regulator’s KYC rules, which can mean verification happens at deposit, at withdrawal, or not at all on the way to a first deposit. The reader who wants ID-before-deposit as a guarantee is choosing the Commission-licensed side.

Does GAMSTOP self-exclusion apply at an Anjouan-licensed casino?

No. GAMSTOP has been a mandatory condition of every online operating licence since 31 March 2020, which means it applies at Commission-licensed sites and not at Anjouan-licensed sites. A self-exclusion registered with GAMSTOP does not reach an offshore site. For a player using self-exclusion as a tool, the offshore route is the route the tool does not cover.

Do the UK’s stake and wagering-requirement caps apply on an Anjouan licence?

No. The £5 stake cap for players aged 25 and over from 9 April 2025, the £2 cap for 18-24-year-olds from 21 May 2025, and the 10x wagering-requirement cap from 19 December 2025 all bind at Commission-licensed sites and do not bind at Anjouan-licensed sites. The same slot on an Anjouan licence will accept a higher stake per spin, and the same bonus can carry a higher wagering factor.

Can a UK player use a UK dispute-resolution service if an Anjouan-licensed site refuses a withdrawal?

No. The Commission’s approved ADR route — typically IBAS, with the Commission behind it — applies at Commission-licensed sites only. An Anjouan-licensed site has no Commission complaints path because the Commission is not its regulator. Dispute resolution is whatever the operator’s T&Cs and the Anjouan regulator provide, and the practical route is harder to access and slower to produce a result for a UK customer.

Is an Anjouan licence the same thing as a Gambling Commission licence?

No. An Anjouan licence is an authorisation issued by Anjouan Gaming under the Anjouan Offshore Finance Authority to operate an online gaming business from Anjouan. A Gambling Commission licence is an authorisation issued by the UK regulator under the Gambling Act 2005 to operate a gambling business in Great Britain. The two are granted by different regulators, under different regimes, and they are not interchangeable. A UK-facing operator needs a Commission licence; an Anjouan licence alone is not enough.

Published by the lowdepositcasinouk team.