How online casino licences work

What a licence actually covers

Licensing conditions differ by regulator, but the ones that matter most to a player are usually the same:

• Player funds kept apart from the operator’s own working capital, so the business running into trouble does not mean player balances are lost with it.
• Games and random number generators tested by an independent lab, not just the operator’s own claim that they are fair.
• Identity and age checks, and anti-money-laundering controls on deposits and withdrawals.
• A route to complain that does not depend on the operator agreeing to listen - an independent dispute service the regulator recognises.
• Rules on marketing and, in several jurisdictions, specific tools to limit or stop your own play.

A licence is a legal minimum, not a guarantee of anything beyond it. It says the operator must meet that regulator’s rules, not that a particular game or bonus is a good deal.

The regulators you will see most often

A handful of regulators licence most of the market outside your own country’s domestic operator. What each one requires, and how it enforces it, is genuinely different:

• Gambling Commission (Great Britain) - licenses any operator that transacts with or advertises to consumers in Great Britain, whether or not the company is based there. Sets binding licence conditions and codes of practice, requires GAMSTOP participation, and runs its own enforcement and public register.
• Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) - established in 2001 (as the Lotteries and Gaming Authority, renamed MGA in 2015). One of the older EU-based regulators for online gambling, with its own technical and player-protection requirements and a public licence register.
• Curaçao Gaming Authority (CGA) - the current name of the body historically known as the Curaçao Gaming Control Board. Curaçao’s 2024 gambling law (the Landsverordening op de Kansspelen, in force from 24 December 2024) replaced the old system, where a handful of "master" licence holders sub-licensed other operators, with direct licences issued by the CGA to each operator. Existing master licences are being wound down under transition arrangements rather than continuing to sub-license new sites.
• Gibraltar Gambling Commissioner - licenses operators based in Gibraltar, with its own regulatory and anti-money-laundering requirements.
• Isle of Man Gambling Supervision Commission - established 1962, regulates both land-based and online gambling on the Isle of Man, including a requirement to keep player funds segregated from operator funds.
• Alderney Gambling Control Commission - established 2000, licenses online gambling operated from Alderney, including well-known game suppliers as well as consumer-facing operators.
• Kahnawake Gaming Commission - established 1996, licenses online gambling operated from the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake in Quebec, Canada. One of the longest-running online gambling regulators.
• PAGCOR (Philippines) - a Philippine government body with a long history regulating gambling domestically; it has also licensed offshore-facing online operators.

Beyond these, a growing number of smaller jurisdictions - Anjouan (Comoros) and the Tobique Gaming Commission (a First Nation regulator in New Brunswick, Canada) among them - now issue online gambling licences too, generally with a faster and less expensive application process than the regulators above.

Why licences are not interchangeable

A licence from the Gambling Commission or the Malta Gaming Authority typically comes with more prescriptive, publicly documented consumer-protection rules than a licence from a newer or smaller jurisdiction - things like mandated self-exclusion schemes, detailed advertising codes, and a named independent dispute body every licensee must use. That does not automatically make every licensed operator under a smaller regulator unsafe, but it does mean the rulebook behind the licence, and how actively it is enforced, is worth knowing rather than assuming.

It also matters which country a licence actually covers. A licence issued for one jurisdiction does not necessarily authorise an operator to accept players from every other country - that depends on both the regulator’s own rules and the laws of the player’s own country, which a casino licence has no power to override.

How to check a licence claim is genuine

1. Find the licence number, usually in the site footer or terms and conditions, not just the regulator’s logo.
2. Search that number on the regulator’s own public register (for example the Gambling Commission’s public register, or the Curaçao Gaming Authority’s certificate lookup at cert.cga.cw) rather than trusting the number as printed.
3. Where the regulator issues a domain-bound certificate, check the domain shown on the certificate matches the site you are actually on - a certificate for a different domain means the seal does not belong to that site.
4. Check the licensed company name on the certificate against the legal entity named in the site’s own terms and conditions.

We only mark an operator’s licence as verified once we have checked it against the regulator’s own register ourselves. See what "verified" means in our reviews.