Anjouan casino licence in the UK: what offshore authorisation means, and what a UK player gives up

Updated September 2026

Licensed

Available in GB

Fast payouts

18+ Only

Last verified against the Gambling Commission’s public register on 23 September 2026; cross-referenced with the Gambling Act 2005, the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014, and the Comoros entry in GIABA’s May 2024 mutual evaluation.

This page is about a single, narrow question: when an online casino holds an Anjouan licence, what does that licence actually authorise, and what does it leave on the table for a player in Great Britain? The honest answer cuts harder than the marketing does. An Anjouan licence is not a Gambling Commission licence. It is not recognised by the Central Bank of Comoros. The UK’s national self-exclusion scheme does not apply to sites relying on it. Stake caps do not apply. ADR does not apply. The offshore authorisation is real in the limited sense that the body issuing it exists and has a process; it does not convert an unlawful offer into a lawful one for a UK depositor. Every later section of this page works out what that asymmetry means in concrete terms.

Responsible gambling: the safeguards that vanish without a UK licence

Responsible gambling is the first shelf because it is the first thing an offshore licence asks the player to trade in. A Gambling Commission licence is not a piece of paper that proves taxes have been paid. It is a permission to operate that comes stitched to a set of mandatory player protections. Step outside that bundle, and each strand of it has to be stood up separately or left on the floor.

GAMSTOP self-exclusion is not portable

Every online operator licensed in Great Britain must take part in GAMSTOP, the national online self-exclusion scheme, and has done since 31 March 2020. A player who registers with GAMSTOP is blocked at every participating site for their chosen period — six months, one year, or five years — and that block cannot be lifted early. It is the single bluntest tool the UK regime gives a player who has decided to stop.

An Anjouan-licensed site is not required to integrate with GAMSTOP. Some will, as a courtesy. Most will not, because the obligation does not apply to them. For a player who has self-excluded and is now searching for somewhere they can still play, that gap looks like an opportunity. It is the opposite. The gap exists because the obligation was removed at the same moment as the legal cover was. A self-exclusion registered with one set of casinos holds only where it is enforceable, and the offshore set is not where it is enforceable.

Stake caps, spin timers, and the rules that shape a session

Online slots at a Commission-licensed site are bound by a hard set of mechanical rules. Auto-play has been banned since 31 October 2021. A slot spin may not resolve faster than once every 2.5 seconds. Losses disguised as wins — celebratory sounds and animation for a spin that returned less than the stake — are banned. From 9 April 2025, the maximum stake per game cycle for players aged 25 and over is £5; from 21 May 2025, players aged 18 to 24 face a £2 cap. These are statutory limits, attached to the licence, not to the player who chooses to honour them.

An Anjouan-licensed site answers to a different rulebook. The 2.5-second minimum spin time, the autoplay prohibition, the stake caps, the “losses disguised as wins” ban — none of these apply automatically. Where a site imposes them anyway, it is doing so on its own terms; nothing requires it to. A player who arrived on the page because the marketing felt permissive will find that permissiveness written into the mechanics, not bolted on as an option.

Financial vulnerability checks and the prompt to set a limit

Two further obligations bind a Commission-licensed site and do not transfer. From 28 February 2025, operators must run a light-touch financial vulnerability check at £150 of net deposits in a rolling 30-day window, using public data only — a check designed to catch markers like county court judgments or existing insolvency without contacting a credit reference agency. From 31 October 2025, every first-time depositor must be prompted to set a financial limit before the deposit goes through. These rules are social responsibility code obligations under the Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice (LCCP); they are written into the licence itself, so a licensee that drops them is in breach and accountable to the Commission.

None of this machinery is invoked by an Anjouan licence. The site does not see the £150 threshold, has no LCCP code to meet, and has no Commission to answer to. Some sites will replicate the prompt voluntarily. The legal floor — the bit that bites when the operator would rather not — is lower.

Age and identity verification, where it lands

Every Commission-licensed site verifies name, address and date of birth before a first deposit or any play, and has done since 7 May 2019. Credit cards have been banned for gambling since 14 April 2020, including credit cards routed through e-wallets. The verification obligation is industry standard now, not a Commission oddity, and most reputable offshore operators run a similar check. Two things change when the licence behind the check is not the Commission’s: the check is no longer tied to a breach regime the Commission can enforce, and the consequences of slipping through are different. The age gate is the most important of those, because it is where the harm of an underage account is non-recoverable.

Help that is reachable from this page, not next month

The National Gambling Helpline (GamCare) and GambleAware are the two channels the UK regime funds for the player who wants to talk. They are not offshore services and they do not need a UK licence to be useful; a player on any site can reach them. The point is that they sit beside the rest of the regime. A dispute with a Commission-licensed site can be escalated to an approved ADR provider. A complaint about an Anjouan-licensed site has no equivalent routing. GamCare is no substitute for an enforcement hand, and the page that calls it that is mis-selling help a player already knows how to find.

The Anjouan licence, in plain terms

What it is and where it sits

Anjouan is the easternmost island of the Comoros archipelago, 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. From that body, Anjouan Gaming styles itself the “Internet Gaming Regulatory Authority” and issues separate B2C and B2B internet gaming licences against an applicant. The structure exists; the website is reachable; the application form is on offer. None of that is contested. The contested bit is what the licence buys the holder, and who recognises it.

What it is not, as a matter of record

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. Twelve years on, 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 licence therefore sits in an unusual position: it issues from a body that the licensing country’s own central bank does not recognise, against an activity that the country’s penal code prohibits. It exists for the international market. It does not exist in the sense that domestic Comorian players can play under it, or that Comorian courts will police a breach of it.

What it does for a UK player

For a UK player, the licence does one thing: it gives the operator something to put on a footer. It does not give the operator the right to transact with that player — that right comes from a Gambling Commission operating licence, and only from one. Section 33 of the Gambling Act 2005, reinforced by the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 from 1 December 2014, makes it an offence to provide or advertise remote gambling facilities to consumers in Great Britain without a Commission licence, regardless of any other licence the operator may hold elsewhere. The point-of-consumption regime has been in force for just over a decade; the principle is that the player is in Great Britain when the bet is placed, and the licence that authorises the bet is the one that covers Great Britain.

Where the disruption stops

The Commission disrupts illegal sites through cease-and-desist notices, search-engine delisting referrals, and payment and hosting referrals. It does not have ISP-blocking power, so the disruption is partial; offshore sites aimed at the UK market continue to appear, and the Commission’s published enforcement pages give a running list. None of this changes the legal position. A site without a Commission licence remains unlawful to operate for GB customers however many cease-and-desist notices it has absorbed or outlasted.

The licence inside the UK regime: how a Gambling Commission licence works

What the public register actually lists

The Gambling Commission maintains a public register of gambling businesses, searchable online and downloadable in CSV or Excel. As of 18 September 2026 it listed 139 businesses holding an active remote casino operating licence. The register has two views that matter for an online player: a licence-holder view, which lists the businesses authorised to operate, and a domain view, which lists each website against the licence account that runs it. A remote casino licence number carries the form account number-R-licence number-suffix, where the leading six digits repeat the licence account and the R marks a remote (online) licence.

On the same date, the domain list carried 1065 active and 361 white-label domain entries. A white-label site trades under another company’s licence — it is operated by a third party against the licence of a Commission-holder, and the holder remains answerable for what the white-label partner does. The distinction matters because the licence number a player sees on the white-label footer is the licence holder’s number, not the white-label partner’s. The Commission is the regulator of the holder, not the partner.

Reading a licence number

A licence number on the register can be read in three pieces. The leading six digits are the licence holder’s account number. The R segment marks a remote licence — an online betting or casino permission rather than a premises one. The trailing suffix is a version number that goes up when a licence is varied; the licence is the same permission, varied. A player who wants to confirm the licence number on a casino’s footer needs the Commission’s register open in another tab; the lookup is by account number or by domain, and it returns the account holder, the licence number, the licence status, and any current regulatory action. The test is binary. If the number is on the register, the licence is live. If it is not, the site is not Commission-licensed for GB play.

A word on what “active” means

“Active” on the domain list means the domain is recorded against a live licence account. It does not mean the player is in good standing, nor that the licence has no conditions attached, nor that the operator has no live enforcement case. It means the regulator has not withdrawn the licence. The register also lists “Inactive”, which means the domain is no longer operating against that account. White-label sites are tagged separately because the structure of the relationship is different. None of those tags covers player conduct; that sits elsewhere in the Commission’s public outputs.

What the offshore licence changes for the player

What an Anjouan-licensed site is not required to do

A site holding only an Anjouan licence is not required to take part in GAMSTOP, not subject to the £5 / £2 stake caps, not bound by the 2.5-second minimum spin time, not bound by the autoplay ban, not bound by the “losses disguised as wins” prohibition, not bound by the LCCP financial-vulnerability prompt at £150 net deposits, not bound by the ban on credit card use, not required to verify age with the rigour the Commission expects, and not within the Commission’s complaints process. It is not required to follow the 15% point-of-consumption tax regime for GB customers, which is a competitive lever the operator chooses not to take up, but it has no Commission-licensed reason to refuse GB customers either. The shape of the offer is the operator’s discretion in a way a Commission-licensed offer is not.

What stays on the floor

The licensed set delivers the same protections in the same places, regardless of the operator behind them. GAMSTOP integration; stake caps by age band; spin timers; identity verification; the £150 financial vulnerability check; the first-deposit limit prompt; the credit card ban; the loss-disguised-as-win prohibition; the ADR pathway. These are the things a player is buying when they choose a Commission-licensed site over an offshore one. They are not features of a single operator. They are the architectural floor of the UK regime, repeated identically across every licence holder, and a search for one of them is not how any of them is found. They are found by the licence.

The asymmetry a player cannot negotiate

The asymmetry is not subtle. The licensed operator offers the package; the offshore operator offers the rest of the offer, with the package omitted. The player cannot transact their way back into GAMSTOP from an Anjouan-licensed site, cannot insist on the £5 stake cap, cannot rely on an ADR determination if a withdrawal is refused. Some offshore sites will honour some of these protections voluntarily. None of them are obliged to. The pattern is not that the offshore site is more permissive in a way that gives the player more freedom and fewer rules. The pattern is that the offshore site has no rules it has not chosen, and the player has no leverage to compel them.

Top ten licensed UK casino sites, from the public register

The set below is taken from the Gambling Commission’s public register of gambling businesses on 18 September 2026, organised as the regulator sees it. None of the licences are bets on player experience. They are entries on the register, each cross-referenced to an operating licence that authorises GB play. A “no-data” cell carries a single em dash; the operator is named in the register, the field is not in research, and nothing is implied either way.

The register can be searched online at the Commission’s site and downloaded in full as CSV or Excel. The figures below come from that download as of 18 September 2026. Where a row shows a white-label domain, the licence holder is the operating account and the entry on the footer is the holder’s number, not the white-label partner’s.

Paddy Power

Paddy Power sits on the register under account 39411, PPB Games Limited, holding remote casino operating licence 039411-R-319335-010. The licence number resolves to the same account number that appears first in the format, with the R marking a remote permission and the trailing suffix the current variation. Paddy Power is one of three major brands operated under LC International Limited alongside Ladbrokes, Coral and Gala Bingo; the register treats each domain as its own line because the offering is its own brand, and the licence covers each in turn. As an established high-street name turned online operator, the licence history goes back through the post-2014 point-of-consumption transition. The Commission treats the licence as live and the domain as active.

The licence is the protection set out earlier in this article — GAMSTOP integration, the £5 / £2 stake cap, the spin timer, the financial vulnerability check, the ADR pathway. The Paddy Power footer carries the same number a player can run through the Commission’s search to confirm the licence is live. As a brand on this list, Paddy Power is the long-running bookmaker-cum-casino with a sportsbook pedigree. The register does not judge that pedigree; it records the licence.

Verdict. Paddy Power’s strength is the register entry itself: a multi-account, multi-domain licence holder that the Commission has held accountable across multiple brand cycles. For a player who values regulatory durability over novelty, that is the point of the entry. The licence has been live, varied, and re-issued, and the Commission has had cause to use that variation. The brand is what the rest of the offer adds on top.

Unibet

Unibet (unibet.co.uk) is associated with account 45322, Platinum Gaming Limited, holding remote casino operating licence 045322-R-324275-019. Unibet is one of the Kindred Group brands; the operator is a single Maltese-rooted group with multiple European licences, of which the GB licence is one. The co.uk domain is the GB-specific endpoint; the .com is not. For a UK player, the licence that authorises the bet is the GB licence, full stop.

The protection layer is the same. GAMSTOP, stake caps, spin timer, ADR, the lot. Unibet has a long European online heritage; the GB licence is younger than the brand but is the licence the player is buying when they deposit from a UK address.

Verdict. Unibet is the heritage European online operator running a GB arm under Platinum Gaming. The brand’s offer is well-rehearsed outside the UK; the UK licence is what makes that offer reachable from a UK address without putting the player on the wrong side of section 33. For a player who knows the European product and is now in the UK, the relevant fact is the licence account, not the parent group.

Sky Vegas

Sky Vegas sits on the register with account 65519, Bonne Terre Gaming Limited, holding remote casino operating licence 065519-R-339675-002. Sky Vegas is a distinct brand within the Sky Betting and Gaming stable, separate from the sportsbook. The licence account is Bonne Terre Gaming, not Sky Betting and Gaming directly; the brand line is the consumer-facing one, the licence account is the regulator-facing one, and the two are deliberately not the same name because consumer-facing branding does not map cleanly to the licence structure.

Sky has the GB-only posture of a single-jurisdiction operator, and the register carries one licence number per registered brand. The licence is the same kind — active remote casino operating — and the same set of protections attaches.

Verdict. Sky Vegas is the consumer-facing casino brand of Bonne Terre Gaming, set up so the licence account and the consumer brand stay separate. The protection layer is the standard GB package. The register entry is what a player who wants to verify the chain has to work through: account 65519, Bonne Terre Gaming, the licence number, the active status. The brand is recognisable; the licence is what makes that brand usable from a UK address.

kwiff

kwiff (Kwiff.com) is connected to account 44448, Eaton Gate Gaming Limited, holding remote casino operating licence 044448-R-323408-017. kwiff is the smaller operator on this list by historical reach; the licence is the same kind as the larger ones, and the protections attach in the same way. The Commission treats every licensee by the same code, regardless of footprint. The licence is varied through suffixes; a higher suffix is not a better licence, only a more-amended one.

The kwiff entry is the kind that often prompts a player to ask whether the size of the operator is a tell. It is not. The Commission assesses by licence, not by market share. A smaller licensee is held to the same standards and gets the same kind of enforcement if it breaches them.

Verdict. kwiff is the smaller operator on this list by reach, with no special standing on the register for being so. The protective layer is the standard GB package. For a player for whom the small-operator angle matters — fewer tiers, less brand clutter, a single domain to verify — kwiff’s register entry is the value proposition. It is not a larger safety net than the next entry; it is the same net.

bet365

bet365 (Bet365.com) appears in the register under account 55149, Hillside (UK Gaming) ENC, holding remote casino operating licence 055149-R-331499-004. The .com domain is the GB endpoint; the brand is one entity under English regulatory cover, with a separate Hillside (UK Gaming) account as the Commission-facing operator. bet365 is among the largest online operators in Great Britain and the licence is the licence a GB player is buying, full stop; the offshore group structure is not the relevant fact for a UK address.

The same protection package applies. The same Commission regulatory action can befall it; the same ADR pathway stands behind any dispute the player wishes to escalate. The scale does not change the structure.

Verdict. bet365 is the largest operator on this list by reach, and the licence entry is what its scale has been organised around. For a player for whom scale is the relevant signal — book depth, payment coverage, market breadth — the bet365 entry is the entry. The protection layer is the standard GB package and is not added to or subtracted from by the size of the account.

MrQ

MrQ (Mrq.com) is recorded against account 60629, Tek Fox Ltd, holding remote casino operating licence 060629-R-337532-004. MrQ is a smaller casino-only brand, the operator that built a position around no-wagering promotions rather than bonus volume. The licence account is Tek Fox Ltd; the consumer brand is MrQ. The same protection package applies.

For a player reading the MrQ register entry, what matters is that the licence number resolves to a real Commission permission, that the domain is recorded against that account, and that the structural protections attach. The smaller-account pattern is the same as kwiff’s; the Commission treats the operator the same way regardless of the marketing line behind it.

Verdict. MrQ is the smaller no-wagering brand running under Tek Fox Ltd, and the licence entry is what a player who arrives at the site for the marketing line actually has to check. The protection layer is the standard GB package. The brand’s offer is its differentiator; the register’s protection is the same as everyone else’s on this list.

Midnite

Midnite (Midnite.com) is listed on the register as an active domain of account 42647, Dribble Media Limited, holding remote casino operating licence 042647-R-321653-022. Midnite arrived in the market as a sportsbook-led brand with a casino arm, and the licence entry is the relevant Commission-facing fact for either product line. The account number 42647 is older than some of the newer entrants on this list; the licence has been varied through suffixes, the standard lifecycle of a multi-year licence.

The same protections apply. The Commission does not differentiate by product line within a single remote casino operating licence; the protection package covers everything the licence authorises.

Verdict. Midnite is the sportsbook-led brand with a casino arm, and the register entry covers both product lines under one licence. The protection layer is the standard GB package. For a player whose primary product is sports and who values a casino arm under the same licence account, the Midnite entry is one place to consolidate. The protection is not broader than the next entry; it is the same.

Virgin Games

Virgin Games is listed on the register as a white-label domain of account 38905, Gamesys Operations Limited, holding remote casino operating licence 038905-R-319430-022. This is the white-label pattern in action: the licence holder is Gamesys, the consumer brand is Virgin Games, and the relationship is recorded on the register as a white-label tag. A white-label site trades under another company’s licence; the holder is answerable to the Commission for what the white-label partner does. A player reading a Virgin Games footer sees Gamesys’s licence number, and that is the correct read.

The white-label structure changes what is on the register, not the protections. GAMSTOP, the stake caps, the spin timer, the financial vulnerability check, the ADR pathway — all attach to the licence, which is Gamesys’s, and the consumer-facing brand does not change that.

Verdict. Virgin Games is the white-label pattern on this list: a recognisable consumer brand running under Gamesys Operations Limited’s licence. The protection layer is the standard GB package, attached to Gamesys, not to the consumer brand. For a player who values the Virgin brand name, the register entry is what turns that name into a usable offer from a UK address. The protection is not diminished by the white-label structure.

BetVictor

BetVictor (Betvictor.com) is listed on the register as an active domain of account 39576, BV Gaming Limited, holding remote casino operating licence 039576-R-319370-028. BetVictor is one of the longer-running independent brands in the UK market; the operator is BV Gaming, the brand is BetVictor, and the structure has stayed close to the same name across its licence history. The licence account has been varied across its life and the suffix reflects that.

The same protection package applies. BetVictor has had licence variations the Commission’s register records through the suffix; that is normal for a long-running licensee, not a flag.

Verdict. BetVictor is the long-running independent brand running under BV Gaming Limited, and the register entry is the licence chain across its history. The protection layer is the standard GB package, attached to the licence account. For a player who wants an older independent brand with a single licence account behind it, the register entry is the relevant fact; the protection is not narrowed by the independence.

Grosvenor Casinos

Grosvenor Casinos sits on the register as an active domain of account 57924, Rank Interactive (Gibraltar) Limited, holding remote casino operating licence 057924-R-334666-005. Grosvenor is the high-street casino brand turned online; the online arm runs under a Gibraltar-registered operator because the Rank Group’s structure puts the online licence in Gibraltar for tax and corporate reasons, while the GB licence authorises the online product. This is the cross-border pattern common among larger UK-facing groups.

The same protection package applies. The licence is the licence. The corporate structure behind it does not change what the player is buying: a GB-licence-permission to offer online casino to a GB player, with the full rulebook attached.

Verdict. Grosvenor Casinos is the high-street casino brand running online under Rank Interactive (Gibraltar) Limited, and the register entry is the GB-facing licence for the consumer brand. The protection layer is the standard GB package. For a player who knows the high-street brand and wants the same name online, the register entry is what the .com domain maps back to. The protection is not diminished by the Gibraltar-registered operator; the licence is the licence, and it is the Commission’s.

Reading the register — a worked turn

A reader who has decided to verify one of the licences above can do it in roughly five minutes. The Commission’s public register at gamblingcommission.gov.uk accepts a search by licence number, by account number, or by domain. Each route returns the same four things: the licence account name, the licence number, the licence status, and any current regulatory action. A player who has a casino tab open in one window and the register search in another can confirm the chain in the time it takes to enter the domain. The lookup is binary — the licence is live or it is not — and the rest of the question (is the licence active, is there enforcement action, what is the variation suffix) sits in the register entry itself.

A licence number that does not resolve, or resolves to an Inactive status, is the moment a player should close the tab. A licence number that resolves but carries an action — a warning, a suspension, a condition — sits between the Commission and the operator; the player has the LCCP complaints pathway, and the Commission’s enforcement action does not lift the obligation to honour player balances. The register does not adjudicate player disputes. It does adjudicate who is licensed.

The licensed set, ranked by what each domain is on the public register

The ten rows above are ten domain entries on the public register, each tagged active or white-label against a single licence account. Nine are tagged active; one — Virgin Games — is tagged white-label, because Gamesys Operations Limited runs the consumer-facing brand under its own licence rather than operating Virgin Games directly. The brand list is the register’s consumer-facing face; the licence accounts are the regulator-facing reality; the two do not always match name-for-name, and that is normal. The “Subject support” column carries an em dash throughout because research does not record it for any of the ten; that is the honest gap, and naming a hypothetical number in its place would be a guess.

What the table cannot show is the variation suffix after each licence number. Every licence on the table has been varied at least once; a higher suffix is a more-amended licence, not a better one. A player reading the table should treat the licence number as a pointer to the register entry, run the number through the Commission’s search, and look at the actual current state — variation suffix, licence status, and any current enforcement action — which is where the live information sits.

Wagering requirements since 19 December 2025: a band, not a number

Since 19 December 2025, wagering requirements at Commission-licensed sites have been capped at 10x for any bonus, and mixed-product bonuses (a bet on sport returning casino spins, for example) have been banned outright. The 10x cap applies to the bonus amount and is enforced against the licensee, not the player. For a player reading a promotional email, the math behind the offer is now bounded in a way it was not before that date.

The fixed calculation on this page reads as a band rather than a single figure because the input — the size of the bonus — is the variable the player chooses. A £10 bonus at the 10x cap carries £100 of required turnover before withdrawal is unlocked. A £50 bonus carries £500. The cap is the same; the workload scales with the offer. The information the cap gives is that no licensed bonus can ask a player to turn over more than ten times its face value, and that no licensed bonus can mix casino play with a sportsbook bet inside a single promotion. The information the cap does not give is what the right bonus size is for a given bankroll, nor whether the bonus is worth taking at any size. Those judgments depend on the player’s budget, the games they intend to play, and what they would have wagered without the bonus — questions the cap does not address.

For an Anjouan-licensed site, the 10x cap does not apply. The cap is a Commission rule, written into the licence, and a site without the licence has no obligation to honour it. Some offshore sites impose their own wagering caps; others do not. A player choosing between two offers — one licensed at 10x, one offshore at the operator’s choice — is choosing between a cap they can rely on and a cap they can only request. The relevance of the licensed cap is that it is a hard ceiling enforced by a regulator with territory over the player. The offshore cap, where one exists, is an operational choice.

Reading the rest of the law

What the 2014 Act did

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. The 2014 Act, in force from 1 December 2014, closed that route. Any remote operator transacting with or advertising to consumers in Great Britain now needs a Commission operating licence, regardless of where it is based. The same regime brought in a 15% point-of-consumption tax on gross gambling yield from GB customers — the now-standard mechanism for taxing remote gambling where the customer is.

The 2014 Act is the reason this page starts from where it does. The principle the Act bakes in is that the player is in Great Britain when the bet is placed, and the licence that authorises the bet is the one that covers Great Britain. Anjouan is not on the white list. It was not on the white list before the Act came in, and the Act made the concept redundant anyway. There is no path by which an Anjouan licence converts into a permission to take a GB player’s deposit.

What the 2005 Act still does

The Gambling Act 2005, which received royal assent on 7 April 2005, established the Gambling Commission as the regulator for Great Britain. Its objectives are three: preventing crime, ensuring fairness, and protecting children and vulnerable people. Section 33 makes it an offence to provide remote gambling facilities to people in GB without a Commission licence. The Commission enforces; the operator answers. The Act’s scope is Great Britain — England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland has its own regime, and pages that conflate the two mislead.

The 2005 Act is the floor. Subsequent legislation — the 2014 Act, the stake and wagering caps, the autoplay ban — sits on top of it, each adding a layer. None of those layers survives for a site without the underlying licence, which is the practical reason the licence matters more than any one of them.

What offshore actually means for a player

Where the Commission can and cannot reach

The Commission’s enforcement tools are visible in its published action pages: cease-and-desist notices to illegal operators, search-engine delisting referrals, payment-processor referrals, and hosting-provider referrals. The Commission can make a site harder to find and harder to pay; it cannot take it offline at the network level, because ISP-blocking powers sit elsewhere. Offshore sites aimed at the GB market continue to appear, and continue to be disrupted, and the pattern is partial rather than complete. Disruption is not the same as enforcement.

What the Commission cannot do is deputise the player. The player who registers with an offshore site is not, and is not treated as, a wrongdoer. The penalty sits with the operator. For the player who reaches a withdrawal dispute on an offshore site, the regulatory consequence of the operator’s breach lands on the operator, not on the player’s claim. That is not how the GB regime is supposed to work; the GB regime is supposed to give the player an ADR pathway that ends a dispute, rather than a regulator that fines a wrongdoer.

What the offshore licence changes

What the offshore licence changes is not the legal position — section 33 of the 2005 Act is unchanged — but the practical posture. A licensed operator and an unlicensed operator are both reachable from a GB address. The licensed one answers to the Commission; the unlicensed one answers, at best, to a regulator in the licensing jurisdiction. Where the licensing jurisdiction is Anjouan, the regulator is the Anjouan Offshore Finance Authority; where the Central Bank of Comoros does not recognise the offshore authority’s licences, the upward chain is short. The constraint on the offshore operator is the operator’s own sense of what it can get away with, restrained by the payment-processor and hosting-provider referrals the Commission can trigger. The constraint on the licensed operator is the Commission itself.

Where to get help

The National Gambling Helpline (GamCare) is reachable on 0808 8020 133, free from any phone, and operates 24 hours a day. GambleAware offers a wider information layer and is reachable online. Neither requires a Commission licence to be useful; both are funded to support anyone in Great Britain who has decided to talk about gambling, regardless of where they have been playing. A dispute with a Commission-licensed site can also be escalated through an approved ADR provider; the Commission’s website lists the providers it recognises.

GAMSTOP is reachable at gamstop.co.uk, with self-exclusion periods of six months, one year or five years, and the block cannot be lifted early. The block applies to every Commission-licensed online operator; it does not apply to offshore sites the operator has not chosen to integrate with. A player who registers with GAMSTOP and then deposits at an Anjouan-licensed site has been protected against the licensed set and unprotected against themselves, and that is the shape of the gap.

Frequently asked questions about an Anjouan casino licence in the UK

What does an Anjouan gambling licence actually authorise?

It authorises the operator to hold itself out as licensed for online gaming under the Anjouan Offshore Finance Authority, against an application and ongoing fee. The licence does not extend to consumers in Great Britain, who are governed by the Gambling Act 2005 and the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014. Any operator taking a GB player’s deposit without a Gambling Commission licence is committing an offence under section 33 of the 2005 Act, regardless of what other licences it may hold elsewhere.

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

The Commission’s verification requirement — name, address and date of birth, checked before the first deposit or any play — is attached to the GB licence. An Anjouan-licensed site is not bound by it; some operators run a similar check as a commercial choice, others do not. For age and identity, the legal floor for a GB player at an offshore site is lower than for the licensed set.

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

No. GAMSTOP participation has been a mandatory condition of every Commission online licence since 31 March 2020. An Anjouan-licensed site is not on the GB register, has no licence condition requiring GAMSTOP, and therefore has no contractual or regulatory obligation to honour a GAMSTOP registration. Players who have registered with GAMSTOP and are considering an offshore site should know that the block they registered against does not extend to it.

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

Neither. The £5 / £2 stake cap per game cycle is a Commission rule attached to the GB licence. The 10x wagering-requirement cap, in force since 19 December 2025, is the same. An Anjouan-licensed site answers to its own house rules and is not bound by either. A player who arrives at an offshore site because the marketing promises fewer constraints is reading accurately — the offshore regime is genuinely more permissive on mechanics.

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

No. Approved ADR providers work under Commission rules; an Anjouan-licensed site is not within those rules. A GB player with a withdrawal dispute at an offshore site has the operator’s internal process and, in principle, the licensing authority that issued the operator’s licence — neither of which has the leverage the Commission has over a GB licensee. That is the practical reason the offshore route is cheaper for an operator, and it is also the practical reason it is riskier for a player.

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

No. A Gambling Commission licence is the permission required under section 33 of the Gambling Act 2005 and the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 for any operator to provide remote gambling facilities to GB consumers. An Anjouan licence is an authorisation issued by the Anjouan Offshore Finance Authority, not recognised by the Central Bank of Comoros and consistent with a domestic regime that GIABA’s May 2024 mutual evaluation report records as prohibiting gambling under the Comorian Penal Code. The two are different documents, from different regulators, with different reach, and one cannot stand in for the other in Great Britain.

Published by the casinoprovidersuk team.