Anjouan casino licence in the UK: what the offshore stamp covers, and what it leaves the player without

Updated September 2026

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A licence on a casino’s footer is the one piece of legal language a player is asked to take on trust. The header might say “internationally licensed”, the footer might say “Anjouan”, and the page might never mention which body actually enforces the rules the player is playing under. For a UK resident the difference between those two answers is not a curiosity — it is the difference between a regulator with statutory powers and a domain stamp issued by an offshore authority with no standing in Great Britain. This page sets out what an Anjouan casino licence does, what it does not, and what a UK player is and is not protected against when one is the only licence a brand holds.

Data current as of 23 September 2026, checked against the Gambling Commission’s public register of gambling businesses and the operator-by-operator licence entries held against it.

What an Anjouan gambling licence actually authorises

Anjouan is the easternmost island of the Comoros archipelago in the south-western Indian Ocean, an autonomous island within 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, and Anjouan Gaming, styled the “Internet Gaming Regulatory Authority”, operates under that authority and issues separate B2C and B2B internet gaming licences. The authority’s own site describes Anjouan Gaming as the regulator; the authority itself was set up to license offshore finance activity, not consumer gambling.

Two pieces of context frame what that licence is worth. 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 the Anjouan Offshore Finance Authority. And 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. The regime that grants the licence is not the regime that the player’s home regulator recognises, and the island’s own penal framework does not treat gambling as a permitted consumer activity.

What the licence does authorise is narrower than its marketing suggests: it lets the operator use “Anjouan” wording on the footer, and it creates a contractual relationship between the operator and the Anjouan authority. It does not authorise the operator to take a UK player’s deposit, and it does not bring the player inside any UK protection framework.

How the UK’s own licensing framework works, and why it sits apart

The Gambling Act 2005, which received royal assent on 7 April 2005, established the Gambling Commission as the regulator for Great Britain and set objectives of preventing crime, ensuring fairness, and protecting children and vulnerable people. Before the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014, operators licensed in the European Economic Area, Gibraltar, or “white-listed” jurisdictions such as Alderney, the Isle of Man, Tasmania and Antigua and Barbuda could serve Great Britain customers without a Gambling Commission licence. That door closed on 1 December 2014, when the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 came into force and required any remote gambling operator transacting with or advertising to consumers in Great Britain to hold a Gambling Commission operating licence, regardless of where the operator is based, and to pay 15% point-of-consumption tax on gross gambling yield from GB customers.

Under that regime it is a criminal offence to provide or advertise remote gambling facilities to Great Britain consumers without a Gambling Commission licence, regardless of any licence, such as one from Anjouan, that the operator holds elsewhere. The Gambling Commission’s public register listed 139 businesses holding an active remote casino operating licence on 18 September 2026; the register can be searched online and downloaded in full as CSV or Excel files, and a remote casino licence number on the register 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 only test. A brand without an entry on it is, for UK purposes, unlicensed. The register’s domain list records each website against the licence account that runs it, with a status of Active, Inactive or White Label; a white-label site trades under another company’s licence. On 18 September 2026 the register held 1065 active and 361 white-label domain entries.

What a player gives up by choosing an Anjouan-only site

The cost of an offshore-only licence is not a single line in the small print. It is a stack of protections the UK regime attaches to every Commission licence, and which an Anjouan-only site has no obligation to provide. Six points matter.

Mandatory GAMSTOP self-exclusion does not apply

Every operator licensed by the Gambling Commission must take part in GAMSTOP, the national online self-exclusion scheme. That obligation has been a condition of every online licence since 31 March 2020, with periods of six months, one year or five years, none of which can be cancelled early. An Anjouan-licensed site has no UK obligation to honour a GAMSTOP registration. A player who has self-excluded across the UK-licensed market can still open an account, deposit and play at a site whose only licence is Anjouan, because that site sits outside the agreement GAMSTOP enforces.

ID checks are not statutory at offshore sites

Under Commission rules, minimum age 18 is enforced and name, address and date of birth are verified before the first deposit or any play, a position in force since 7 May 2019. The verification is the licence condition, not a courtesy. An Anjouan-licensed site is not bound by the same Commission licence condition. It may still run identity checks for fraud or anti-money-laundering reasons, but it is not running them under a UK statutory obligation, and the consequences of a missed check are different.

UK stake and wagering caps do not bind the offshore site

Two product rules from the UK regime simply do not bind an Anjouan-only site. Online slots at Commission-licensed sites carry a maximum stake per game cycle — £5 for players aged 25 and over (from 9 April 2025) and £2 for 18-24 (from 21 May 2025). Since 31 October 2021 auto-play is banned, a slot spin may not be faster than 2.5 seconds, and losses disguised as wins are banned. Since 19 December 2025 wagering requirements are capped at 10x and mixed-product bonuses (e.g. bet on sport, get casino spins) are banned. None of those rules is a condition of an Anjouan licence. The cap on stake, the speed limit, the loss-as-win ban and the wagering multiple cap all sit downstream of a Commission licence, and an offshore-only brand is free to set its own values.

Anonymous play is not possible at a Commission-licensed site — but is at an offshore one

Anonymous play is not possible at a Commission-licensed site by design, because the verification rule binds the operator before the first deposit. An Anjouan-only site does not inherit that rule. A player looking to deposit without supplying name, address and date of birth will find that harder to do on a Commission-licensed brand than on an offshore-only one. That is the one place the choice of licence runs in the offshore site’s favour, and it is the inverse of the protection logic that drives the rest of the regime.

UK dispute resolution is unavailable

A player who cannot get a withdrawal out of a Commission-licensed brand has a complaints route: the Commission’s approved ADR and the operator’s own licence conditions. A player with the same problem at an Anjouan-only brand has only the operator and whatever dispute process that operator chooses to publish. The ADR schemes approved by the Commission do not have jurisdiction over an operator the Commission has not licensed. The Commission’s enforcement tools run against illegal sites, not against the player; what the player loses on an unlicensed site is protection — no GAMSTOP, no Commission complaints route, no approved ADR.

Credit-card bans and prompt-for-limit obligations do not extend

Credit cards are banned for gambling since 14 April 2020, including credit cards routed through e-wallets. Operators must prompt a customer to set a financial limit before the first deposit, a position in force from 31 October 2025. There is no state-set deposit or loss ceiling — the prompt is the obligation. An Anjouan-only site is not bound by either rule. The offshore brand may follow the same rules voluntarily, but the player has no statutory fallback if it does not.

The financial-vulnerability check, the prompt, and what an Anjouan-only site is free to skip

Two newer UK rules reinforce the same picture. Financial vulnerability checks run at £150 net deposits in a rolling 30 days, a position in force from 28 February 2025, using public data only. The wider financial risk assessments are announced but not yet in force. The point is not that the offshore site cannot run similar checks — many do — but that the offshore site is not obliged to. A player who fails the vulnerability check at a Commission-licensed site is shown information and may face a deposit refusal. The same player at an Anjouan-only site is at the operator’s discretion.

Responsible gambling on an offshore site: what “safeguards” actually mean there

The phrase “responsible gambling” travels across the offshore industry without changing the regulator. A Commission-licensed brand runs that phrase as a licence condition, backed by the social responsibility code, the LCCP and the Remote Technical Standards, and enforceable through the Commission’s enforcement powers. An Anjouan-only brand runs the same phrase as a marketing line, backed by whatever is in its own terms page and enforceable, in practice, only through the Anjouan authority and through whatever consumer protection regime applies in the player’s home jurisdiction.

That is the difference the footer does not show. The Commission’s register is the source of the difference: every brand on it has signed up to the social responsibility code, participates in GAMSTOP, has its products vetted against the Remote Technical Standards, and is subject to Commission enforcement. A brand not on the register has signed up to whatever it says it has, and the player has no UK regulator to escalate to if that falls short. National Gambling Helpline (GamCare) and GambleAware are the UK’s support services, and they remain available to a player regardless of where they play; the difference is what the operator is obliged to do at the same time as the player is reaching out.

What happens to an unlicensed site once the Commission finds it

The Commission disrupts illegal sites — cease-and-desist notices, search-engine delisting, payment and hosting referrals — but has no ISP-blocking power. No penalty is aimed at the player; what the player loses on an unlicensed site is protection. The disruption is real, but it runs against the operator, not against the player’s account balance. A site that has been cease-and-desist-noticed can continue to take deposits for as long as it chooses to ignore the notice, and the player’s recourse remains the operator’s own terms page.

A worked example: the 10x wagering cap as a band

Since 19 December 2025 wagering requirements are capped at 10x and mixed-product bonuses are banned. The cap is the headline; the band is what it means in practice, because a 10x requirement on a £10 bonus is one thing and a 10x requirement on a £200 bonus is another. On the smaller end — say a £10 bonus with the 10x cap in force — the required turnover is £100, and a 5-second interval on a single slot at a typical stake puts the clearing time somewhere in the low tens of minutes of active play. On the larger end — say a £200 bonus under the same cap — the required turnover is £2,000, and at the same stake and interval the clearing time sits in the high tens of hours of play, an order of magnitude longer and the point at which the offer starts to compete with the player’s time rather than their bankroll.

The point of the band is that the cap does not erase the difference between a small offer and a large one; it bounds the worst case. The arithmetic is the same on both ends — bonus multiplied by the wagering factor gives the turnover; turnover divided by the stake-per-spin gives the number of spins; spins multiplied by the 5-second interval gives the play time. What changes between the two ends of the band is the size of the number, and what that number means to the player who is being asked to produce it.

The conclusion the band supports is what the band is about: a wagering requirement is, in plain prose, the amount of money the player is asked to put through the games before the bonus money becomes withdrawable. The cap limits the multiple; it does not limit the size of the figure. A player looking at a £200 bonus under a 10x cap is looking at £2,000 of turnover. The arithmetic says nothing about how likely a win is, and nothing about what the offer is worth in expected value. It tells the player how long the bonus takes to clear, and how long that takes is the only honest answer the arithmetic gives.

How the comparison table lays out the field

Every brand in the comparison that follows is taken from the Gambling Commission’s public register: the domain is listed against the licence account that runs it, with the remote casino operating licence number. Several brands can share one licensee — the register’s “white-label” entries are how that shows up — and the table records each brand against its actual licensee and licence. The “subject support” column reflects what the research file carries for each brand on the page’s subject, and what it does not: every entry is “no-data”, because the research set did not collect offshore-licence evidence for any of these Commission-licensed brands.

A note on the licence-holder column. Several rows name a holding company that is not British-domiciled even though the licence is a GB one: Platinum Gaming is Maltese-owned, Hillside (UK Gaming) sits inside a Guernsey group, and Rank Interactive (Gibraltar) Limited is the licensee behind Grosvenor’s online product. Domicile is not the same as the licence the operator holds. A GB remote casino licence is the test, and these companies hold one; the offshore parent is a corporate fact, not a regulatory one.

A second note on the white-label row. Virgin Games runs under Gamesys Operations Limited’s licence. The register records the arrangement explicitly, which is why the domain status is “White-label” rather than “Active”. The player who plays at Virgin Games is, for regulatory purposes, playing under Gamesys’s licence — which means the Commission’s rules, GAMSTOP, the social responsibility code and the rest of the framework apply through that licence, not through the brand on the front of the site.

A third note on what the table is not. The table is not a ranking. The plan’s instructions say so explicitly: this is not a recommendation, and it carries no bonus terms. The order is the order of the research file’s operator list. The table is the picture of who is on the register; the choice of which brand to play at is a separate decision the player makes on their own account.

Paddy Power — the long-established multi-channel book

Paddy Power sits on the register under PPB Games Limited, account 39411, with active remote casino operating licence 039411-R-319335-010; Paddy Power is listed as an active domain. The brand’s strength in the comparison is its position in the UK-licensed market: the licence is held by the same company that runs the high-street bookmaker, the Commission register has carried the licence for years, and the social responsibility code applies to every product on the domain. The page’s subject cuts against it, in a sense, because no research evidence connects the brand to any offshore or Anjouan angle — and the player looking specifically for an Anjouan-stamped operator will not find one here. For the player who wants a GB-licensed brand and is comparing it against an offshore-only alternative, the comparison is simple: Paddy Power carries GAMSTOP and the Commission’s complaints route; an offshore-only site does not.

Unibet — the Platinum Gaming licence, and what sits behind it

Unibet operates under the Platinum Gaming Limited licence, account 45322, with remote casino operating licence 045322-R-324275-019. Platinum Gaming is the Malta-headquartered Kindred Group vehicle that holds the GB licence for the Unibet brand in Great Britain. The Malta parent matters for the player because the offshore-facing brand elsewhere in Europe is not the same brand as the GB one — the GB one is the one on the register, and that is the licence the player’s deposit is regulated under. The same trade-off that runs through the whole table applies: the GB-licensed Unibet is inside GAMSTOP, the social responsibility code and the dispute-resolution framework; the offshore version is not.

Sky Vegas — the Bonne Terre Gaming licence

Bonne Terre Gaming Limited, account 65519, holds the remote casino operating licence 065519-R-339675-002 for Sky Vegas. The licensee is a Sky-owned entity and runs the Sky Vegas product under that licence. Sky’s larger broadcast presence does not change the regulatory picture: the licence is a GB remote casino operating licence and the Sky Vegas site is on the register. The brand sits on the same footing as every other Commission-licensed casino for the player comparing it against an Anjouan-only site. Where the Sky brand differs from some of the others in the table is that its primary product is slots rather than sports — the GB-licensed product set is a Sky-side decision, not a regulatory one.

kwiff — the Eaton Gate licence and a smaller account

kwiff operates under the Eaton Gate Gaming Limited licence, account 44448, with remote casino operating licence 044448-R-323408-017. The brand is smaller than some of the household names on the table, and the register is the test that places it inside the framework. The trade-off here is the same one that runs through the whole page: a Commission-licensed site carries GAMSTOP and the social responsibility code, an Anjouan-only site does not. The size of the operator is not the relevant fact for the player who is choosing between an offshore-only site and a GB-licensed one; the licence is.

bet365 — the Hillside licence and the household-name benchmark

Hillside (UK Gaming) ENC, account 55149, holds the remote casino operating licence 055149-R-331499-004 for bet365. The brand is the largest private name on the table by UK-licence footprint and the one most often cited as the benchmark for what a Commission-licensed product looks like. The Hillside parent sits inside a Guernsey group — a corporate domicile fact rather than a regulatory one. The GB licence is the licence the player’s deposit is regulated under. For the player comparing the brand against an offshore alternative, the comparison is the same one the table is built around.

MrQ — the Tek Fox licence and a no-wagering positioning

Tek Fox Ltd, account 60629, holds the remote casino operating licence 060629-R-337532-004 for MrQ. MrQ’s market positioning is built around a no-wagering offer structure, which is now in step with the 10x cap that came in on 19 December 2025: a no-wagering offer is below the cap by construction. The positioning does not change the licence picture — the site is Commission-licensed, GAMSTOP applies, the social responsibility code applies. What it changes is the offer shape, and the offer shape is what the player sees at the point of deposit.

Midnite — the Dribble Media licence and a newer account

Midnite is on the register as an active domain of Dribble Media Limited, account 42647, under remote casino operating licence 042647-R-321653-022. The licence is one of the more recent entries on the register and the brand is a newer name in the GB-licensed set. The trade-off holds: GB-licensed means inside the framework, outside the framework means not. The newer licence is no less a GB licence for being newer.

Virgin Games — the Gamesys white-label entry

Virgin Games is on the register as a white-label domain of account 38905, Gamesys Operations Limited, which holds the active remote casino operating licence 038905-R-319430-022. The white-label entry means the player playing at Virgin Games is, for regulatory purposes, playing under Gamesys’s licence. The Commission’s rules, GAMSTOP, the social responsibility code and the Remote Technical Standards all apply to the Gamesys account, and Virgin Games is one of the domains that sits inside that. The arrangement is the register’s standard way of recording that one licence can run several brand front-ends.

BetVictor — the BV Gaming licence

BetVictor is on the register as an active domain of BV Gaming Limited, account 39576, under remote casino operating licence 039576-R-319370-028. The licence is held by the same company that runs the BetVictor brand across its UK-facing product set, and the brand has been on the register across multiple licence renewals. The trade-off is unchanged: GB-licensed means GAMSTOP, the social responsibility code and the dispute-resolution route all apply; an Anjouan-only alternative does not.

Grosvenor Casinos — the Rank Interactive licence and the land-based parent

Grosvenor Casinos is on the register as an active domain of Rank Interactive (Gibraltar) Limited, account 57924, under remote casino operating licence 057924-R-334666-005. The licensee is the Rank Group’s online vehicle, and the Grosvenor brand runs across both the land-based casino estate and the GB-licensed online product. The Gibraltar-domiciled parent is a corporate fact; the GB licence is the licence the player’s deposit is regulated under. The same trade-off that runs through the table applies: the GB-licensed Grosvenor is inside the framework, an offshore-only alternative is not.

How the player reads the difference between an Anjouan licence and a Commission one

Three checks cover most of what a player needs to know.

First, the register. The Gambling Commission’s public register is the test of whether a brand holds a GB remote casino operating licence. A brand without an entry is, for UK purposes, unlicensed. The register can be searched online and the licence number on a casino’s footer can be checked against it.

Second, the licence wording on the footer. “Anjouan” or “Anjouan Gaming” or “Internet Gaming Regulatory Authority” is not a substitute for a Commission licence. The two are not interchangeable: a Commission licence is the licence that authorises a casino to take a UK player’s deposit, and an Anjouan licence is not. The two authorities are not in agreement — the Central Bank of Comoros stated in 2014 that it does not recognise licences issued by the Anjouan Offshore Finance Authority — and the GIABA May 2024 mutual evaluation report on the Union of the Comoros records that gambling is prohibited under the Comorian Penal Code.

Third, the protection list. GAMSTOP, the £5 / £2 stake cap, the 2.5-second spin floor, the loss-as-win ban, the 10x wagering cap, the credit-card ban, the prompt-for-financial-limit obligation and the financial vulnerability checks all sit downstream of a Commission licence. A brand on the register is bound by them; a brand not on the register is not. The list is what the choice of licence actually means in practice, and it is the reason the choice matters.

Where the Anjouan-only site sits for a UK player, plainly

For a UK player, an Anjouan-only site is a casino that has not been through the Commission’s licensing process and is not on the register. The marketing language about “internationally licensed” does not change that, and the footer does not change it either. The site can be well-run; the research file does not turn up evidence either way on that, and the question is one of regulatory position rather than operational quality. What the regulatory position means is the list set out above: no mandatory GAMSTOP, no UK stake cap, no UK wagering cap, no UK ID-verification obligation, no UK dispute-resolution route. The site may follow the UK rules voluntarily; the player has no UK regulator to escalate to if it does not.

The page’s view of this is direct. Anjouan-only is not a UK licence and is not a substitute for one. A UK player who chooses an Anjouan-only site chooses, by that single choice, to step outside every protection the Commission regime attaches to a deposit. That is the trade the licence represents, and the trade is the page’s answer to the question the search carries.

Frequently asked questions

What does an Anjouan gambling licence actually authorise?

It authorises the operator to display “Anjouan” wording on the footer and to operate under the Anjouan Offshore Finance Authority’s framework. It does not authorise the operator to take a UK player’s deposit; the Commission licence is the licence that does that. An Anjouan licence is also not recognised by the Central Bank of Comoros, and gambling is recorded as prohibited under the Comorian Penal Code.

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

Not as a UK statutory obligation. The Commission’s name, address and date-of-birth verification is a licence condition, and an Anjouan-only site is not bound by it. The site may still verify for its own fraud or anti-money-laundering reasons, but the consequences of a missed check are not the same as under a Commission licence.

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

No. GAMSTOP is mandatory for every Commission-licensed online operator, a condition in force since 31 March 2020. An Anjouan-only site is not part of that agreement and has no UK obligation to honour a GAMSTOP registration. A self-excluded player can open an account and deposit at an offshore-only site that does not choose to mirror the UK scheme.

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

No. The £5 / £2 stake cap (from 9 April 2025 and 21 May 2025 respectively) and the 10x wagering cap (from 19 December 2025) are Commission licence conditions. They do not bind an offshore-only operator. The 2.5-second spin floor and the loss-as-win ban also do not bind. None of those rules is a condition of an Anjouan licence.

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

No. The Commission’s approved ADR has jurisdiction over Commission-licensed operators, and an Anjouan-only brand is not one. The player has the operator’s own complaints process and whatever consumer protection regime applies in the player’s home jurisdiction, but not the UK ADR. That is one of the protections the offshore-only choice forfeits.

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

No. A Commission licence authorises an operator to take a UK player’s deposit and brings the operator inside the UK’s social responsibility code, GAMSTOP, the Remote Technical Standards and the dispute-resolution framework. An Anjouan licence is an offshore authorisation that does neither. The two are not interchangeable, and the Commission’s register is the test of which a brand holds.

Created by the ”casinoratingsuk” editorial team.