Anjouan gaming licence in 2026: how to get one, what it costs and what to know first

Anjouan is an island within the Union of the Comoros, where a licensing regime for online gaming has operated since 2005. Over the past three years it has become the most widely used low-budget option on the market, and the reasons are not hard to see.

Speed. Two to four weeks from a complete submission to issue. Curaçao since its reform takes three to six months; Malta starts at five.

Cost. Base official fees come to around €17,000 a year. For comparison, Curaçao’s annual charges after the reform run to €47,450 plus a non-refundable application fee. The difference is roughly two and a half times.

No substance requirements. No local company, no share capital, no resident director, no office or staff on the island. Your platform and content providers can sit wherever suits the business.

Tax. Neither gross gaming revenue nor profit is taxed.

Broad vertical coverage. A single licence covers casino, sports betting, poker, bingo, live dealer, virtual sports and lotteries. There is no need to buy separate permissions for each vertical, which is where Anjouan differs from the Maltese model.

What the licence does in practical terms: it lets you sign agreements with game content providers, connect industry payment services and work with affiliate networks. For launching a product and reaching first revenue that is enough, which is precisely why the jurisdiction took the share of the market it did.
What follows covers who it suits, what is required, what it actually costs and what to factor into your planning.

The jurisdiction solves a specific set of problems, and it saves time to establish early whether they are yours.

Projects at launch stage. Where speed to market and cost control matter more than the standing of the jurisdiction. The budget difference against Curaçao is around €35,000 in the first year, which is several months of a team’s time or a full marketing test.

Teams validating a product. Working out whether the model holds and the unit economics stack up is cheaper on an inexpensive licence. Moving to a more expensive jurisdiction remains possible later, once revenue justifies it.

Multi-vertical projects. One licence across all directions simplifies both launch and subsequent expansion of the product range.

Operators with distributed teams. The absence of substance requirements removes an entire layer of cost and administration.

Solution providers. Since July 2025, platform developers, game studios, payment services and compliance solution providers working with operators on the island have needed a licence of their own. For this category Anjouan stopped being a choice and became a condition of doing business.

Where something else is worth considering. Projects that need an account with a conventional bank. Operators planning to work with the largest content providers, where jurisdiction requirements are higher. Companies preparing for institutional funding or a sale. And anyone whose target market is the European Union: that requires Malta or a national licence in the specific country.

A licence is issued for twelve months and renewed annually. The renewal application goes in no later than thirty days before expiry: missing that means a gap in status, and a gap in status means payments stop.

B2C licence, for working with players. For operators taking bets directly: casino, sports betting, lotteries, poker. It carries obligations around customer due diligence, anti-money-laundering controls, responsible gambling, player balance management and transaction reporting.

B2B licence, for working with businesses. For content providers, platforms, aggregators and live studios. The holder does not serve the end player. The emphasis shifts to contractual arrangements, security, event logging and confirmation of game fairness through random number generator certification. Since July 2025 this licence has been a condition of working with operators on the island, so demand for it has risen sharply.

Combined licence. Allows both directions within a single legal entity: your own brand plus a platform for partners. It saves budget but demands a more detailed process model to keep flows, reporting and liability properly separated.

How to choose. Working with players directly points to the first. Supplying solutions to operators points to the second. The combined licence makes sense where both directions genuinely exist rather than being held in reserve: it complicates reporting.

Requirements are lighter than in established jurisdictions, but the document pack is a full one, and its quality determines how long the review takes.

Corporate. Company registration in the jurisdiction. Disclosure of beneficial owners and directors with proof of address. Police clearance certificates and source of funds and source of wealth documentation for key persons. Each additional key person on the application is charged separately, typically around €2,000.

Policies and procedures. A complete anti-money-laundering and customer due diligence policy: identification, transaction monitoring, limits, reporting procedure. Responsible gambling procedures: self-exclusion, deposit limits, time-outs, mechanisms for identifying problem behaviour. A data protection policy, drafted with the European regulation in mind where European players are involved.

Technical. Documentation on the platform, data segregation and event logging. Random number generator certification or confirmation of game fairness from an accredited laboratory. Anti-fraud and multi-accounting controls. Server infrastructure meeting security requirements.

Operational. A description of products and target markets with risk assessment by geography. Agreements with content providers and payment services, noting that since 2025 providers need their own licence. Complaints and refunds procedures and a player dispute resolution framework.

What actually drives the timeline. Not the number of documents but their consistency and how fast you respond to follow-up questions. An application where the business model description, the contracts and the stated target markets disagree goes round for another cycle. An application where answers take a week takes twice as long.

Headline “from” figures explain little, so here is what the spending actually consists of.

Official regulator fees. The base annual package runs to around €17,000: a licence fee of roughly €13,300, an ISP monitoring charge of about €1,700 and a compliance officer approval fee of around €2,000. Each additional key person adds approximately €2,000.

Company formation and support. Incorporation, constitutional documents, corporate resolutions, preparation of the compliance pack, and handling the submission and correspondence with the regulator.

Technical costs. Random number generator certification where your configuration requires it, priced by the laboratory. Payment service onboarding: due diligence, testing and possible security deposits under the provider’s risk model.

Annual costs. Licence renewal, corporate maintenance, policy updates, review of responsible gambling procedures, quarterly reporting.

Full-service support with us starts at €19,000, with a timeline of around four weeks on a complete document pack.

For a sense of scale. Curaçao after the reform: a non-refundable application fee of about €4,600 plus annual charges of roughly €47,500, a realistic first-year budget from €52,000, a three to six month timeline, and mandatory presence on the island with an office and a resident managing director. Malta starts at €35,000 with a timeline from five months and requirements around share capital and local staff.

What that means over time. Across three years, Anjouan’s official fees come to around €51,000 against roughly €147,000 for Curaçao, before any substance costs. For a project still proving its economics that is a material difference.

Step 1. Model review, one to three days. Determining the licence format, the list of verticals, target geographies and payment channels. This is also where we check that the beneficial owners clear the requirements.

Step 2. Company formation, three to seven days. Incorporation, appointment of directors and officers, constitutional documents, corporate resolutions.

Step 3. Preparing the pack, one to two weeks. Key person files, policies, provider agreements, process documentation. The most labour-intensive stage, and the one that determines whether there will be an extra round of questions.

Step 4. Submission and payment of fees, one to three days.

Step 5. Review and technical verification, two to four weeks. Beneficial owners, source of funds, platform, integrations and procedural documents all get checked. Follow-up questions are likely, and how quickly you answer them affects the final timeline more than anything else.

Step 6. Decision and issue. Entry on the register and issue of the certificate. Immediately afterwards, confirm that your certificate validates through the current verification framework: since April 2026 this is a separate requirement, and partners will use it.

Step 7. Payment processing setup, one to four weeks. This follows licence issue. The decision belongs to the payment provider, and nobody can guarantee it.

A realistic total from start to first payment is six to ten weeks. Licence issue itself takes two to four; the rest goes on preparation and payment onboarding.

The jurisdiction has tightened up noticeably, and that is worth factoring into your planning. Material written in 2025 does not reflect any of it.

July 2025: provider requirement. A rule was introduced under which every provider working with Anjouan operators must hold a local B2B licence or a recognised equivalent. It captures software developers, platforms, game studios, payment services and compliance solution providers. For an operator this means checking the status of your contractors: an agreement with an unlicensed provider becomes a problem at review.

April 2026: new certificate verification framework. From 1 April 2026 an updated system for confirming licence authenticity has been in force. It appeared after register lookups proved unreliable and market participants could not always confirm a counterparty’s licence was live. For a well-run operator this is a positive: a verifiable certificate removes questions from partners.

Quarterly reporting. Compliance reports are now filed quarterly. Reporting in this jurisdiction used to be close to a formality; there is now a calendar to keep.

How to read this. The direction is consistent: requirements are rising, procedures are getting stricter, and the market is gradually shedding its less careful participants. For an operator running things properly that is an advantage rather than a burden, because the gap between you and questionable projects becomes visible to partners.

A short section, but worth reading before you decide: it explains why Anjouan costs a fraction of established jurisdictions and why that difference is not accidental.

Level of regulation. Anjouan is an autonomous island within the Union of the Comoros. Licences are issued under a 2005 island act on computer gaming licensing. The division of competences between the island level and the federal level of the Union remains a question without a settled answer: gambling is not separately regulated at federal level, and the parties differ on the scope of the island authorities’ powers.

What that means in practice. An Anjouan licence is not the equivalent of a tier-one regulator’s licence such as Malta or the United Kingdom, and it is not positioned as one by the regulator or by the market. What it provides is a legal framework for activity in the issuing jurisdiction and, more importantly for most projects, operational access: the ability to contract with providers, connect industry payment processing and work with affiliate networks. That practical access is the value of the product.

Where the boundaries sit. Conventional banks approach operators with this status more cautiously than holders of Curaçao, Nevis or Malta licences. Some of the largest content providers set higher jurisdiction requirements. And no offshore licence opens regulated markets: taking bets from residents of a country with its own regulation requires a local licence.

The practical conclusion. Anjouan does the job of a fast, inexpensive launch well. As revenue grows and partner requirements harden, many operators move to a more recognised jurisdiction, and that move is best planned in advance rather than at the point a partner announces a change of policy. We handle both the first step and the later transition.

The licence has broad reach, but a list of restricted territories exists, and breaching it is grounds for revocation.
The list covers Australia, Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Comoros themselves, plus every country on the FATF blacklist and any other jurisdiction closed by regulator decision.

The logic behind it is straightforward: these are markets with their own strict regulation, where taking bets without a local licence is an offence. Geo-blocking needs configuring before launch rather than after the first warning. A missing country block is a standard reason for complaints against both the operator and its payment service provider.

The list can also expand. Check the current version before entering any new market, not once at application stage.

An honest comparison is more useful than advertising, so here are the cases where Anjouan is not the right answer.

Curaçao. Since the reform, licences are issued directly by the regulator and the old master and sub-licence model is gone. More expensive and slower, but considerably better recognised: wider banking access, more accommodating providers. It requires a local legal entity and real presence, and local staffing requirements tighten further in 2027 and 2029. Chosen once a project has moved past the validation stage. More on the Curaçao licence.

Nevis. Comparable banking access at a lower cost than Curaçao. A sensible option where the priority is working with financial partners. More on the Nevis licence.

Tobique. The middle ground: more than Anjouan, less than Curaçao, a timeline from seven weeks, no presence requirements. More on the Tobique licence.

Kahnawake. Requires the primary servers to sit within the jurisdiction. For some projects that is an obstacle, for others an argument in favour. More on the Kahnawake licence.

Malta. The benchmark for European regulation: strong standing with banks and acquirers inside the EU. It requires a local legal entity, a resident director, an office, share capital and regular audits. Timeline from five months, cost from €35,000. More on the Malta licence.

Isle of Man. High recognition with more flexible requirements than Malta. Suits mature projects. More on the Isle of Man licence.

All directions and their terms are set out in the licensing section.

An Anjouan licence solves a specific problem: giving a project legal operating status quickly and on a controlled budget. In that role it remains the most accessible solution on the market, and over the past year the jurisdiction has tightened its procedures noticeably.

For most projects the sensible strategy runs like this. Launch on Anjouan with a limited budget. Prove the product, the economics and the payment routes on real revenue. Move to a more recognised jurisdiction on a planned basis as revenue and partner requirements grow. That approach costs less than starting in an expensive jurisdiction and is more predictable than leaving the question until a partner raises it for you.

Finextwin is an international corporate services firm with offices in Hong Kong and Tbilisi. Over 6+ years we have registered companies in 30+ jurisdictions for more than 1,250 clients and we work with 65+ banking partners. We handle the application, the document pack and the choice of payment route, and we help plan the move to another jurisdiction once a project grows into it. Licence decisions rest with the regulator and account decisions with the financial institution, and nobody can guarantee either: our job is to remove the reasons for refusal in advance. A manager responds within 30 minutes.