Curaçao, Anjouan, Kahnawake: what each gambling licence is worth

A Curaçao, Anjouan or Kahnawake licence tells you that a named company has filed paperwork with a named authority and can, in principle, lose its permission to operate. It does not insure your balance, and none of the three regulators will order an operator to pay you. Curaçao’s authority says so in plain words, Anjouan’s says it “does not handle, mediate, or adjudicate player complaints”, and Kahnawake promises only to “facilitate appropriate solutions”. This guide explains what each licence actually is, how to check one in the regulator’s own register, and what a complaint realistically gets you, with Malta and the UK as the comparison.

What a licence does for a player, and what it never does

A real licence gives you three things. A legal entity with a name and a registration number, which is who you would sue or report. A list of obligations on paper: anti-money-laundering procedures, a complaints procedure, rules about minors and restricted territories. And a register where anyone can check that the licence exists, belongs to that company and covers that domain.

It never gives you deposit protection. Offshore balances are claims on a company, not segregated money with a guarantee scheme behind them. It also does not give you a tribunal. In all three jurisdictions covered here the path for a player is the operator’s own complaints process first, then an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) body or the courts. The regulator’s lever is the licence itself: it can suspend or revoke, and it can publish that it did.

That lever matters less than it sounds. A revoked licence stops future business. It does not return a frozen withdrawal. The guide on frozen balances covers what to do in that situation.

Curaçao: from master licences to the CGA

The old system

For most of the last two decades a “Curaçao licence” usually meant a sub-licence. Four companies held master licences: Antillephone (8048/JAZ), Curaçao Interactive Licensing (5536/JAZ), Cyberluck (1668/JAZ) and Gaming Services Provider (365/JAZ). They sold sub-licences to operators, and the regulator dealt with the master holders, not with the casinos. Gaming Services Provider told its clients in 2024 that 365/JAZ “will not be extended and will expire on August 18th, 2024”. A footer that still prints a number ending in /JAZ is quoting a structure that has been wound down. A third-party summary of the transition gives January 2025 as the last expiry date among the four.

The LOK regime

The National Ordinance on Games of Chance (Landsverordening op de kansspelen, LOK) came into force on 24 December 2024. The Curaçao Gaming Authority (CGA), formerly the Gaming Control Board, now licenses operators directly. Sub-licensees had to apply for their own licence. The new numbers look like OGL/2024/687/0427, which is the one Roobet prints in its footer for Raw Entertainment B.V.

The CGA publishes a licence registry as a PDF, plus an enforcement register and a list of certificate holders. The registry dated 2 October 2026 lists Raw Entertainment B.V. against OGL/2024/687/0427, which closes a gap I had left open in the Roobet review. By my count of that PDF, 281 rows read “Assessment in progress” and 49 read “Revoked”. The CGA’s own page adds that the overviews “do not guarantee the current validity of the licenses”.

Operators that have a certificate usually link it from a footer seal on cert.cga.cw. Those certificates show the licensee, company number, licence number, grant date, status and approved domains. Read the domain list: one certificate I checked showed “No approved domains on file”, and Duelbits’ certificate covers duelbits.com but not duelbits.io, which runs under an Anjouan licence held by a different company.

What a complaint to the CGA achieves

Very little, by the CGA’s own account. Its online gaming page says “the CGA does not handle individual complaints against gaming providers” and that it “is not a civil court and cannot order gaming operators to compensate players”. It accepts reports of possible regulatory violations by email. That is useful when the issue is systemic, such as a missing licence or an operator serving a market it excludes. It is not a route to your money.

Anjouan: a large register and a hands-off authority

Anjouan is one of the islands of the Union of the Comoros. Anjouan Gaming describes itself as the designated authority for internet gaming licences under Anjouan law, operating under the Anjouan Offshore Finance Authority. It issues B2C and B2B licences with numbers like ALSI-152406029-FI2.

The public register is the strongest thing it offers. I downloaded it on 7 October 2026: 1,543 entries carry the status “valid”. Of those, 340 show an expiry date that had already passed. Gamdom’s entry is one: “valid”, with expiry 29 June 2026, while the seal validator returned “INVALID” for the footer seal I could test. “Valid” in that register is therefore a starting point, not a verdict.

The same download settled a question from the Rainbet review. The register lists rainbet.com under Rain Group Ltd, licence ALSI-152406029-FI2, issued 14 June 2024, expiring 13 June 2027. That matches the company named in Rainbet’s terms, not the “RBGAMING N.V.” in its structured data.

Operators also embed a seal that opens a validator page. For BC.Game it shows the company, the domain, “Operating status: VALID”, and the territories where the licence does not apply: Australia, the Comoros, France, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK and the USA.

What a complaint achieves in Anjouan

The complaint policy is explicit: “The Authority does not handle, mediate, or adjudicate player complaints.” You complain to the operator through its seal, and the operator is expected to resolve it within 30 days. After that you can go to one of four approved ADR providers: EGIS ADR, Axion ADR, iGaming ADR or CADRE B.V. The operator pays the ADR cost. Players in a territory the licence excludes fall outside the process, which is one more reason not to play from a listed country.

Two things that are not an Anjouan gaming licence

A company record at the Anjouan Offshore Finance Authority is a company registration. Ignition’s footer links to one for Bamboo Media; casino.guru still lists Ignition as having no gambling licence. And Mwali (Mohéli) is a different island of the Comoros. BetUS shows a gaming licence from the Mwali International Services Authority, a body the Central Bank of the Comoros has listed among “fictitious structures” for bank and financial licences, according to Finance Magnates.

Kahnawake: older, smaller, and out of the US market since 2016

The Kahnawà:ke Gaming Commission is the “Licensing and regulating authority for gaming activity within and from the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawà:ke”, near Montreal. It has licensed online gaming since 1999, according to its own 2016 press release. Its public list of interactive permit holders names each operator next to its domains: 22Bet appears there under Starsten Limited. When I opened the list on 7 October 2026 it carried the line “Updated September 28, 2023”, which limits how much you can read into an absence.

Kahnawake’s best-documented decision concerns the United States. On 26 September 2016 the Commission directed that a licensee accepting players “from a US State without being authorized by the US State to do so” was harming the jurisdiction’s integrity. Licensees had until 30 September 2016 to comply or lose their licences. Bovada held a Kahnawake licence from 2011 until September 2016, according to third-party histories.

What a complaint achieves in Kahnawake

The Commission runs a complaints page with a form and the address complaints@gamingcommission.ca. You must complain to the licence holder first. The Commission says it will try to “facilitate appropriate solutions”; it does not say it can order payment. It also lists reasons to drop a complaint, including that it was posted on public forums or shared with the media. So file with the regulator before you go public, not after.

Malta and the UK, for contrast

The Malta Gaming Authority runs a searchable Licensee Register with a URL checker. Since 1 April 2019 its Player Support Unit no longer looks at the merits of a player’s dispute; that job belongs to the ADR entity the licensee must offer. In Great Britain, the Gambling Commission’s public register lists licensed businesses. After eight weeks with the operator you can take a complaint to an ADR provider, which the Commission describes as “a free, independent service”.

The difference with the offshore three is not that Malta or London will fetch your money. It is that the ADR step is mandatory, documented and backed by a regulator that inspects. Neither regulator licenses the crypto-first operators reviewed on this site for their global domains.

The four regulators side by side

Footers that name no licence

Some of the best-known US-facing books print licence wording that cannot be checked anywhere. Bovada‘s footer reads “licensed and regulated by the Union of the Comoros and the Central Reserve Authority of Western Sahara”, with no number, no company and no validator. Its terms name Anjouan law, yet I found no Bovada entry in the Anjouan register’s data. A third party says its Curaçao licence lapsed in 2025. BetOnline’s terms name a Panama authority without a number; casino.guru marks that claim “Unverifiable”. MyBookie’s home says “Licensed & Trusted Since 2014” and names no regulator at all.

None of that proves an operator will not pay. It means that if it does not, there is no register entry to point at and no regulator to write to. The scam checklist treats an uncheckable licence as a red flag for that reason.

How to verify a licence in five minutes

1. Copy the company name, registration number and licence number from the footer or the terms. If there is no number, stop here: the licence cannot be verified.
2. Click the seal. A real seal opens a page on the regulator’s domain (cert.cga.cw, verification.anjouangamingboard.org), not on the casino’s.
3. Search the regulator’s own register for the licence number and the company. Use the links in the sources box, not links from the casino.
4. Check that the company matches across the footer, the terms and the register, and that the domain you are on is listed. A licence for a sister domain does not cover the one you use.
5. Read the dates and the status. An expiry date in the past, “Assessment in progress” or an entry in an enforcement list all deserve a second look.

What I do with licences on this site

Every review records which licence I could verify, in which register, on which date. The result feeds the reputation part of my score. A verified CGA or Anjouan entry is a modest plus; a licence claim with no number is a minus; a revoked or fake licence is one of the criteria for the Shit List. The crypto casino list shows the licence on every row so you can filter for it.

The short version

Curaçao now licenses operators directly under the LOK and publishes a registry, but it does not handle player disputes. Anjouan publishes a large register whose “valid” label needs a date check, and sends complaints to the operator and then paid-by-operator ADR. Kahnawake has the longest history and an older list, and stopped licensing US-facing operators in 2016. Verify the number yourself, keep balances small anywhere offshore, and read how crypto casinos compare with regulated ones before you decide what a licence is worth to you.