Anjouan Gambling License in 2026: Cost, Allowed Jurisdictions and Process
Private Financial Services has arranged gaming licences since 2012, and Anjouan licences for more than thirty B2B and B2C operators. We also hold licences from Curacao, Malta, the Isle of Man, Kahnawake and Estonia, which means we can tell you when Anjouan is the wrong answer.
This page covers what the licence costs once every fee is counted, which markets you can actually serve, how the application runs, and what changed in 2026. If you are moving from Curacao, the section on payment processing is the one to read first.
What an Anjouan Online Gambling License Gives You
One licence, every vertical. Online casino, live casino, sportsbook, poker, virtual games and lottery run under a single permit. There is no separate application per product, which is the main practical advantage over jurisdictions that licence each vertical individually.
Crypto is in scope. The licence covers crypto-denominated play and most major coins, and a large share of Anjouan licensees run crypto-first. Your AML programme has to handle on-chain risk properly, including wallet screening and source of funds on crypto deposits.
Zero tax on gaming revenue. No charge on gross gaming revenue, no VAT and no corporate income tax in Anjouan. This holds up, with the caveat on your own country of residence set out further down.
No local presence. No office, no resident director, no local staff. Applications are accepted from operators anywhere, and an existing group can add the licence to its current structure without restructuring.
Intellectual property and adjacent business. The company can hold IP rights and carry on any business not prohibited by law, so the licence holder can sit inside a wider group rather than being a single-purpose shell.
Speed. Four to six weeks from a complete file, against eight to twelve for Curacao. That gap is why most operators leaving Curacao since 2025 have landed here.
Documents Required for an Anjouan Gambling License
Every officer, authorised person, shareholder, director and beneficial owner must provide the following. Files are rejected on stale or missing documents far more often than on substance.
Certified copy of a valid passport, including the pages carrying the photograph and signature.
Recent utility bill as proof of residential address.
Police clearance certificate or certificate of no criminal record from the relevant authority.
CV or resume setting out professional background, with gaming industry experience where you have it.
Original banker’s reference evidencing a relationship of at least two years.
Original professional reference from an accountant or lawyer, covering at least two years.
Content details and agreements, with third-party RNG testing certificates and return-to-player figures where applicable.
Proof of domain ownership for every domain you intend to operate.
Terms and conditions, covering underage gaming, responsible gaming and player KYC.
All documents must be in English and dated within ninety days. Certified translations are required where the original is in another language. Budget two to three weeks for collection, since police certificates and apostilles set the pace of the whole application.
Anjouan Gambling License Cost in 2026
The figure quoted everywhere is EUR 17,000. It is accurate, and it is not the cost.
Licence application: EUR 17,000. The headline figure, covering all verticals under one permit.
Key person authorisation: EUR 2,000 per person, annually. Charged for each approved key individual, so a three-founder structure carries three of these.
Due diligence: EUR 250 to 500 per subject, rising where corporate shareholders extend the ownership chain.
Additional approved domain: EUR 500 each. Multi-brand operators should count these at the planning stage.
Licensing platform access: around EUR 828 per year.
B2B recognition certificate: EUR 9,500 annually, where you supply software rather than operate.
Annual renewal: EUR 13,300.
Company incorporation: EUR 1,100 to 4,000, depending on the vehicle. Nominee director and shareholder services, where used, add EUR 4,000 to 6,000 a year.
What a first year actually comes to
A single-owner B2C operator with one key person and a straightforward structure lands at roughly EUR 21,500 to 22,000 in year one. Add corporate shareholders, several key persons and a few domains and EUR 30,000 arrives without effort. Year two, with renewal and nominees, sits between EUR 17,300 and 19,300.
And the part nobody puts in the comparison
Payment processing is where an Anjouan licence is actually paid for.
Stripe will not process for you. Neither will PayPal. Direct Visa and Mastercard acquiring through tier-one banks is closed, and most EU banks decline iGaming accounts on an Anjouan licence outright. What remains is specialist high-risk processing, priced at 8 to 12 per cent per transaction against 2 to 3 per cent for an operator licensed in a recognised jurisdiction, usually with rolling reserves on top.
Run that against real volume. On EUR 2,000,000 of annual deposits a six-point spread is EUR 120,000 a year. The licence saved you perhaps EUR 30,000 against Curacao. The payment stack then costs four times that difference, every year, and the gap widens as you grow.
This is not an argument against the licence. It is the calculation that decides whether it fits your model. An operator running crypto-first in emerging markets, where card acquiring is a small share of deposits, may never feel it. An operator building a card-led brand in a bank-heavy market will feel it by month three, and no licence saving compensates. Work out your expected deposit mix before choosing the jurisdiction. We model this with clients as a first step, because it is the number that decides the answer.
Anjouan Gaming License and Our Services
Private Financial Services has worked in corporate services since 1997 and in gaming licensing since 2012. Our portfolio covers licences obtained in Curacao, Anjouan, Malta, the Isle of Man, Kahnawake and Estonia, and we have sat on regulatory working groups in several European countries. That range is the point: we are not selling one jurisdiction, so we can tell you when it is the wrong one.
2012
We have been arranging gambling licences since 2012
30+
More than 30 operators have obtained an Anjouan gaming licence with us
4–6
Weeks from a complete file to licence issue, and two to three months from engagement
Private Financial Services: Your Pathway to an Anjouan Gambling License
Company registration for the Anjouan gaming company;
The full Anjouan gaming licence application, from scope through to go-live;
Legal address and company secretary services;
The AML and CTF programme the licence requires, written for your project rather than adapted from a template;
Acquiring connections and corporate bank accounts, planned against your expected deposit mix;
Business plan preparation;
An Anjouan company is often paired with a European entity for processing, and we structure that, including the Cyprus payment agent;
Trademark and intellectual property registration where needed;
Platform selection where you do not yet have one;
Anjouan Gambling License: Important Information
Who issues the licence. Gaming licensing has been administered by Anjouan Licensing Services Inc. since May 2023. The Anjouan Offshore Finance Authority is the financial services authority for the island more broadly. A large share of the market still writes that AOFA issues the gaming licence, which is out of date, and it is worth knowing which body your paperwork actually names.
Zero tax on gaming revenue. No GGR charge, no VAT, no corporate income tax. Low tax in Anjouan is not low tax for you, though: your own country of residence may attribute profits through controlled foreign company rules or treat the company as resident where it is actually managed. We assess both sides as part of international tax planning.
Crypto is supported as a payment method and as a product, and for many licensees it is the primary rail rather than a secondary one.
What changed in 2026
Alternative dispute resolution is now mandatory. Licensees must designate an ADR provider for player complaints. This is new for 2026 and it is checked.
B2B recognition certificates now exist as a separate annual instrument at EUR 9,500, which matters if you supply software rather than operate.
Transfers and re-registration were simplified, alongside tightened AML and KYC checks at application. The file is somewhat heavier than it was and moves somewhat faster once submitted.
The context behind all of it: Curacao’s reform took effect on 24 December 2024 and its sub-licences expired on 31 January 2025. Roughly 900 operators left and the Curacao licensed base fell from over 1,200 to around 300 inside a year. Anjouan absorbed the largest share and grew from a few hundred licensees to close to 1,500 in about two years. That is why the jurisdiction looks busy, and also why due diligence at the licensing end has tightened.
Which Jurisdictions an Anjouan License Lets You Serve
Almost every page on this subject publishes the same list of nine or ten blocked countries and presents it as the regulator’s rule. That is not what it is, and the difference decides how you plan a market entry.
The list everyone publishes
United States and United Kingdom
France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Austria
Australia
The Comoros itself, Anjouan included
St Kitts and Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines
FATF high-risk jurisdictions subject to a call for action, which as of 19 June 2026 are North Korea, Iran and Myanmar
Comprehensively sanctioned states
What that list actually is
An Anjouan licence carries no territorial restriction under Anjouan law. The licensing body does not define your market and does not police it. Every country on that list is closed for a different reason: its own gambling legislation requires a domestic licence, and serving its residents without one is an offence there regardless of what permission you hold elsewhere.
The consequence is the opposite of what operators coming from a regulated market expect. Your licence does not grant you markets. It gives you a corporate wrapper and a compliance framework. Market access is decided entirely by the law of the country your player sits in, and responsibility for getting that right is yours alone. Nobody in Anjouan will tell you that you have made a mistake.
Which also means the published list is a floor, not a ceiling. It names the obvious ones. It does not name Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Romania, Poland, Greece, Switzerland or Ontario, which equally require a domestic licence, and the list of regulated markets grows every year. Brazil’s regime, live since 2025, took the largest grey market in Latin America off the table for unlicensed operators.
Where the licence realistically works
Operators use it for markets that have not built a domestic licensing regime: parts of Latin America outside Brazil, Southeast Asia, much of Africa, Central Asia and parts of Eastern Europe. It works particularly well for crypto-denominated operations, where the payment constraint matters least and the player base is not asking which regulator you answer to.
It does not work for anyone whose plan involves a tier-one market, anyone whose affiliates require a recognised licence, or anyone expecting to be acquired by a licensed group, because the licence will not survive that diligence.
What you have to actually build: geo-blocking by IP, registration validation against the address and document data your player submits, ongoing monitoring for VPN and proxy access, retained evidence that you run it, and payment-method restrictions aligned to the same list. The countries you block will change during your licence term, so maintain the list monthly rather than configuring it once at launch. Operators who get into trouble on an offshore licence almost never do so because the licence failed. They do so because they kept taking players from a market that regulated itself while they were not watching.
Anjouan Gambling License: Disadvantages
Payment and banking recognition. This is the real constraint and it is covered in full in the cost section above. Tier-one processors decline, EU banks generally refuse iGaming accounts on this licence, and specialist processing runs at four times the rate a recognised licence attracts. Plan the payment stack before the licence, not after.
Player and partner perception. Awareness of the licence among players is limited, and some affiliates and tier-one game providers ask for a recognised regulator or additional guarantees. This has improved as the licensee base has grown, but it has not gone away.
Verifiability. Close to 1,500 licences are claimed. The public register has listed a fraction of that and verification links have returned errors. A compliance officer at a payment provider checks exactly this, so keep your own complete licence documentation to hand rather than relying on a public lookup.
The status of the issuing bodies. You should have this from us rather than from your payment provider. The Central Bank of the Comoros investigated the Anjouan licensing bodies at the end of 2025 and described them as having no physical or legal existence, and the Anjouan Offshore Finance Authority was stripped of regulatory standing by Comorian banking legislation passed between 2013 and 2015. The IMF’s 2026 Article IV report on the Comoros does not mention gaming revenue at all.
None of that has stopped roughly 1,500 operators from licensing here, and none of it has produced enforcement against a licensee. What it means is that the licence is best understood as a commercial instrument rather than a state authorisation, that your counterparties may treat it that way, and that you should know your migration route before you need it. We will tell you the same whether or not you buy the licence from us.
Anjouan vs Curacao vs Tobique vs Isle of Man
Four comparisons come up in every conversation, and only one of them is close.
Against Curacao. The comparison changed completely in 2025. Curacao’s reform ended the master and sub-licence model, the Curacao Gaming Authority now licenses directly, and B2C costs roughly EUR 47,450 a year between treasury and supervisory fees. That is genuine supervision at roughly three times the price, with eight to twelve weeks to issue and a rough transition behind it, including the supervisory board resigning in September 2025. Curacao carries materially better payment and B2B acceptance. See Curacao gaming licensing.
Against Tobique. The closest comparison on price, and the one worth running properly. Tobique costs more, around EUR 43,000 in year one, but its issuing commission operates under a 2023 statute inside a G7 country, on the same constitutional basis Kahnawake has used since 1996. Payment acceptance is better. If the extra cost is affordable, it is the stronger instrument. See the Tobique gambling licence.
Against the Isle of Man or Malta. A different product entirely. These are recognised authorisations that open regulated markets, tier-one payment relationships and institutional investment, at multiples of the cost and timeline. If a regulated European market is the plan, no offshore licence substitutes, and we would rather say so before you spend.
Where Anjouan wins. Speed and price, with one permit across every vertical, crypto in scope and no local presence. For a crypto-first operator targeting markets without domestic licensing regimes, on a budget that will not carry Curacao, it remains the practical answer, and that is why the licensee base grew the way it did.
Tell us your target markets and your expected deposit mix, and we will tell you whether an Anjouan licence fits before you spend anything on one. If it does, we handle the company, the file and the licence. If it does not, we will say which jurisdiction does.
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FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
What is an Anjouan gambling license?
It is an online gaming licence covering every vertical under one permit: casino, live casino, sportsbook, poker, virtual games and lottery, including crypto-denominated play. You do not need a separate permit per product. Gaming licensing has been administered by Anjouan Licensing Services Inc. since May 2023.
How much does an Anjouan gambling license cost?
The licence application is EUR 17,000, with key person authorisation at EUR 2,000 per person annually, due diligence at EUR 250 to 500 per subject, additional domains at EUR 500 each and renewal at EUR 13,300. With incorporation, a first year runs roughly EUR 21,500 to 22,000 for a simple structure and reaches EUR 30,000 for a complex one. Year two sits between EUR 17,300 and 19,300.
The larger cost is payment processing. Specialist high-risk acquiring runs at 8 to 12 per cent against 2 to 3 per cent for a recognised licence, which on meaningful volume exceeds the licence saving several times over. Model your deposit mix before choosing the jurisdiction.
Which jurisdictions does an Anjouan license allow?
Operators block the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Austria, Australia, the Comoros itself, St Kitts and Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines, the FATF high-risk jurisdictions subject to a call for action, which as of 19 June 2026 are North Korea, Iran and Myanmar, and comprehensively sanctioned states.
That list is a floor rather than a rule. An Anjouan licence carries no territorial restriction under Anjouan law, so every market that licenses gambling domestically is closed to you by its own legislation, not by Anjouan’s. Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Poland, Greece, Switzerland, Ontario and Brazil all fall into that category and are not on the published list.
How do I get a gambling license in Anjouan?
Incorporate the company, then submit certified passports, proof of address, police clearance certificates, CVs, banker’s and professional references covering at least two years, content and RNG documentation, proof of domain ownership and your terms and conditions with underage, responsible gaming and KYC policies. All documents in English, dated within ninety days.
How long does it take to get an Anjouan gambling license?
Four to six weeks from a complete file, and two to three months from engagement once document collection and apostilles are counted. Police certificates and apostilles set the pace, not the regulator.
Can I trust an Anjouan gaming license?
Treat it as a commercial instrument rather than a state authorisation, and it will serve you well within its scope. Close to 1,500 operators hold one, no enforcement has been taken against a licensee, and for crypto-first operators in markets without domestic licensing it remains the practical answer.
What you should know: the Central Bank of the Comoros investigated the licensing bodies at the end of 2025 and described them as having no physical or legal existence, and the public register has listed a fraction of the licences claimed, with verification links returning errors. Keep your own complete documentation, plan a migration route before you need one, and do not present the licence to investors as equivalent to a Malta authorisation.
Can I accept cryptocurrencies with an Anjouan license?
Yes, both as a payment method and as a product. Most major coins and virtual assets are in scope. Your AML programme has to cover on-chain risk properly, including wallet screening and source-of-funds handling for crypto deposits.
Should I buy an Anjouan license or choose another jurisdiction?
It depends on two numbers: your budget and your expected card share of deposits. Crypto-first, emerging markets, tight budget, and Anjouan is the right answer. Card-led in a bank-heavy market, and the processing spread will cost you more each year than moving to Curacao or Tobique would have.
Curacao now costs roughly EUR 47,450 a year with real supervision and better acceptance. Tobique runs about EUR 43,000 in year one with a statutory commission inside a G7 country. Tell us your markets and deposit mix and we will run the comparison properly.