The Anjouan licence: a newer name in the footer, and how to read it

Where Anjouan is

Look at a map of the Mozambique Channel, north-west of Madagascar, and you will find a small volcanic archipelago: the Comoros. Anjouan (Ndzuwani in Comorian) is its second island, home to a few hundred thousand people, with its own autonomous government inside the Comorian union. That autonomy extends to financial services, and among them sits a gaming licence created by a local Computer Gaming Licensing Act of 2005.

For years the licence was a footnote. Few operators used it, and gambling regulators elsewhere rarely mentioned it. What changed was not Anjouan but the market around it.

It is small, it is far from the markets its licensees serve, and its authority is not a household name in gambling regulation. None of that makes a licence worthless, but it does mean you have to do a little more reading than with a long-established regulator.

Why its licences spread after 2023

The timing is not a coincidence. When Curaçao announced its reform and began moving to direct licensing with stricter requirements (our Curaçao guide explains the change), some operators looked for somewhere with a quicker, cheaper process. Anjouan's licence, which licensing consultancies advertise as obtainable in a matter of weeks and which covers a broad range of games, filled that gap. Industry press reported a sharp rise in applications during 2023 and 2024.

For a player, the practical consequence is that Anjouan licences are often held by newer brands, and that the jurisdiction has less of a public track record to judge it by.

What the licence is, and what it publishes

• One licence, many games. A single authorisation typically covers casino games, sports betting and other products.
• A validation link. Licensees display a seal or certificate reference that should resolve to a verification page.
• A shorter public rulebook. Compared with Malta or Britain, far less detail on player-protection duties is published, so more of your protection rests on the operator's own terms.

Five checks before a deposit

1. Follow the seal. Click it and see where it leads. It should show a licence reference, the company name and a status. A seal that is only an image tells you nothing.
2. Match the company. The company on the verification page should be the one named in the terms and conditions.
3. Read the complaints clause. Find out what the terms say happens if you disagree with a decision, and whether an outside body is named.
4. Read the withdrawal terms before the bonus terms: minimum and maximum amounts, documents required, and any pending period.
5. Test small. A modest first deposit and an early small withdrawal tell you more about a site than any badge.

These checks are the same ones we recommend for any newer site, and our guide to new online casinos in Ireland expands on them.

Reading the terms with Anjouan in mind

Under a licence that publishes little detail, the casino's own terms and conditions carry most of the weight. Three clauses deserve a slow read. The first is the one on account closure: what happens to your balance if the site closes your account, and on what grounds it may do so. The second is the one on dormant accounts and inactivity fees, which some operators charge after a period without play. The third is the governing-law clause, which tells you which courts or bodies the operator accepts as having the final say. None of these is exotic, and none is specific to Anjouan, but under a lighter licence they are the rules that will actually be applied to you.

How it compares

The details for each are in our guides to Malta and Curaçao; the British regime is covered on the UKGC page and the oldest online regulator on the Kahnawake page. For the Irish authority and its timetable, see the GRAI guide.

Questions worth asking customer support

Support agents at a well-run site answer these without hesitation. At a site that cannot, the silence is itself an answer.

• Which company operates this site, and under which licence reference?
• What documents will you need from me before a first withdrawal, and can I send them now?
• Is there a maximum withdrawal per day, week or month?
• If I dispute a decision, who reviews it after your own complaints team?

Ask by live chat or e-mail and keep the transcript. It costs nothing, takes five minutes, and gives you a written record made before any money was at stake.

A fair conclusion

An Anjouan licence is a legitimate authorisation from a real jurisdiction. It is also a lighter one, and what it does not publish, the operator's own terms have to supply. Read them, run the checks above, and let a small first withdrawal be your real test. The full set of guides is on casino licences explained.

Our five casinos

Independently of any licence discussed here, these are the casinos this site covers, with the welcome offers checked in September.