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The Anjouan Gaming Licence, Explained — What It Actually Means for Players
Anjouan has become the default licence for crypto casinos that left Curaçao. Here is who issues it, what it costs operators, what protection it gives you (and does not), and the licence numbers we verified ourselves for BC.GAME, Shuffle and Roobet.
If you have looked at the footer of a crypto casino recently, there is a good chance you saw “licensed in Anjouan”. Three years ago almost nobody had heard of it. Today it is the default home for operators that left — or were pushed out of — Curaçao. This page explains who issues the licence, what it obliges an operator to do, what it does not protect you against, and how to check whether a specific casino’s licence is real.
Who actually issues it
Anjouan is one of the islands of the Union of the Comoros, off the east coast of Africa. Gambling licences there involve two bodies:
- The Anjouan Betting and Gaming Board (ABGB) — sector-specific oversight of gambling operators.
- The Anjouan Offshore Finance Authority (AOFA) — financial-regulatory supervision, including fit-and-proper assessment and AML/CFT obligations.
A single Anjouan permit covers online casino, sportsbook, poker, lottery, bingo, scratch cards, fantasy and skill gaming, esports and live dealer products. That breadth is unusual — in most jurisdictions those verticals need separate approvals — and it is a significant part of the appeal for operators.
Why operators choose it
Licensing consultancies advertise an Anjouan application fee of around €17,800, a processing time of three to six weeks, and a licence valid for one year with annual renewal. Since July 2025 there is also a B2B layer: software, platform, payment and compliance suppliers working with Anjouan-licensed operators are required to hold either a local B2B licence or a recognition certificate, advertised at roughly €9,500 a year.
Compare that with a Malta or UK licence, which involves months of scrutiny, segregated player funds, and compliance costs an order of magnitude higher, and the commercial logic is obvious. Anjouan is fast, cheap and broad.
The timing matters too. Curaçao’s National Ordinance on Games of Chance (LOK) took effect on 24 December 2024, replacing the old system — four private master-licence holders sublicensing to hundreds of operators — with a single government regulator issuing every licence directly. Operators that could not meet the new requirements, or did not want the scrutiny, needed a new jurisdiction quickly. Anjouan absorbed a large share of them.
What it means for you as a player
This is the part most licence pages skip. An Anjouan licence is a genuine regulatory instrument — it is not a fabricated badge, and holding one is better than holding nothing. But the protections behind it are thin:
- Dispute resolution exists on paper, weakly in practice. Anjouan rules require operators to resolve player disputes within 30 days and to escalate unresolved complaints to alternative dispute resolution. Enforcement of that requirement is widely reported as inconsistent, which means a stalled withdrawal may not have an effective external escalation route.
- Player-fund segregation is not equivalent to Tier-1 regimes. Malta and the UK require operators to hold player balances separately from operating capital, so an insolvency does not consume customer money. Anjouan’s obligations here are substantially lighter — and as BC.GAME’s Curaçao predecessor entities demonstrated, operator insolvency with unpaid player claims is not a hypothetical risk in this corner of the market.
- The banking problem is real. The Central Bank of Comoros does not recognise the Anjouan gaming regulator. That creates friction with banks and payment processors, and some acquirers refuse to work with Anjouan-licensed operators altogether. For a player this is not an abstraction: payment-rail problems are one of the ways withdrawals get slow.
- There is no strong public register. Curaçao’s Gaming Control Board publishes a certificate portal where you can enter a licence number and see a live certificate. Anjouan has no comparably reliable public verification, which makes independent checking harder.
None of this makes an Anjouan casino automatically unsafe. It means the licence carries less of the trust burden, so the operator’s own payout record has to carry more of it.
Licences we verified ourselves
Most affiliate sites copy licence claims from operator footers. We check them. These are the current licences we have verified for operators in our roster, with the exact numbers and operating entities:
| Operator | Jurisdiction | Licence number | Operating entity |
|---|---|---|---|
| BC.GAME | Anjouan (Union of the Comoros) | ALSI-202410011-FI1 | Twocent Technology Limited |
| Shuffle | Curaçao — direct licence | OGL/2024/1337/0628 | Natural Nine B.V. |
| Roobet | Curaçao — direct licence | OGL/2024/687/0427 | Raw Entertainment B.V. |
Two of those tell a story worth reading carefully.
BC.GAME moved to Anjouan in late 2024. The move followed a Curaçao court declaring its former operating entities insolvent over unpaid player claims, after which BC.GAME surrendered its Curaçao licence in December 2024. The brand continues to operate and pay out, and it remains one of the largest crypto casinos by game library — but the jurisdiction change was not a routine upgrade, and we say so in our BC.GAME review.
Shuffle went the other way. It launched in February 2023 on an Antillephone sublicence (8048/JAZ) under Curaçao’s old master-licence system. When that system was replaced, Shuffle obtained its own direct licence — OGL/2024/1337/0628, granted on 16 October 2024 to Natural Nine B.V. Moving from a sublicence to a direct government licence is a genuine step up in accountability, and it is one of the reasons we rate Shuffle where we do in our Shuffle review.
How to verify a licence yourself
For any casino, before you deposit:
- Find the licence number in the footer. No number at all is a red flag; a number that appears nowhere else is worse.
- For Curaçao, use the official portal. Enter the OGL number at the Gaming Control Board’s certificate site. You should get a live certificate naming the operating company. If the certificate is expired or names a different entity, stop.
- For Anjouan, cross-check the entity. With no strong public register, compare the licence number and operating company shown in the footer against the operator’s own terms and conditions. Inconsistencies between the two are meaningful.
- Weight the payout record more heavily. On a light licence, history is the real protection. Look for multi-year operation, and test a small withdrawal before you commit a meaningful balance.
- Know what the licence does not cover. No offshore licence makes online gambling legal where you live. That is a separate question, and it is yours to answer before you sign up.
The bottom line
The Anjouan licence is what the market reached for when Curaçao stopped being easy. It is legitimate, it is cheap, it is fast, and it asks comparatively little of operators — which is precisely why it protects you comparatively little. Our full comparison of the major regimes is in crypto casino licences compared, and the practical checklist is in how to choose a safe casino.
If you play at an Anjouan-licensed casino, do it with your eyes open: verify what you can, keep balances modest, test withdrawals early, and only play where it is legal for you and within limits you set in advance.
FAQ
- What is an Anjouan gaming licence?
- It is an online-gambling licence issued in Anjouan, an autonomous island of the Union of the Comoros. Sector oversight sits with the Anjouan Betting and Gaming Board (ABGB), while the Anjouan Offshore Finance Authority (AOFA) handles financial-regulatory supervision including fit-and-proper and AML/CFT checks. A single permit covers casino, sportsbook, poker, lottery, bingo, esports and live dealer products.
- Is an Anjouan licence safe for players?
- It is a real licence, not a fake badge — but it is a light one. Player-protection standards, dispute-resolution enforcement and ongoing compliance obligations sit below the Malta Gaming Authority and below Curaçao's reformed regime. Anjouan rules require disputes to be resolved within 30 days with escalation to alternative dispute resolution, but enforcement is widely reported as inconsistent. Treat the licence as a starting point and judge the operator on its payout record.
- Why did so many crypto casinos move to Anjouan?
- Cost, speed and scope. Licensing advisories advertise an application fee of roughly €17,800 with a 3–6 week turnaround and annual renewal, and one permit covers every major vertical. When Curaçao replaced its master-licence system with direct government licensing in December 2024, operators that could not or did not want to meet the new requirements needed somewhere to go — and Anjouan was the cheapest, fastest option.
- Is Anjouan better or worse than a Curaçao licence?
- Since Curaçao's reform, worse. Curaçao's National Ordinance on Games of Chance took effect on 24 December 2024, replacing four private master-licence holders with a single government body that issues every licence directly and publishes a verification portal. Anjouan has no equivalent public verification the way Curaçao's certificate portal works, and the Central Bank of Comoros does not recognise the Anjouan gaming regulator at all. Neither jurisdiction approaches Malta or the UK for player protection.
- How do I check whether a casino's licence is real?
- For Curaçao, take the OGL number from the operator's footer and look it up on the Gaming Control Board's certificate portal at cert.gcb.cw — it should return a live certificate naming the operating entity. For Anjouan, there is no comparably reliable public register, so cross-check the licence number and operating company against the operator's own terms and any regulator correspondence they publish, and weight the operator's payout history more heavily as a result.
- Which casinos hold Anjouan licences?
- BC.GAME is the most prominent example we have verified: it operates on Anjouan licence No. ALSI-202410011-FI1 through Twocent Technology Limited, having surrendered its Curaçao licence in December 2024 shortly after a Curaçao court declared its former operating entities insolvent over unpaid player claims. Many smaller and newer crypto casinos also run on Anjouan permits.
