Anjouan Licence Check: How to Verify the Register, and What a Result Does Not Prove

Where to check, and one thing to get right first

The Authority’s public register and its verification tool sit at anjouangaming.com.

Before anything else, note the domain. A .org site with the same name and the same page title also resolves, but it returns 404 on both the fee schedule and the public register, so it does not carry the current framework. If you are checking a licence, check it on the domain that actually hosts the register. This page previously linked the other one.

What you can search, and what comes back

The tool accepts a licence number, a company name or a domain. Domain search is the one that matters most in practice, because the thing you are usually holding is a website, not a company name.

A result returns four fields: the licence holder’s registered name, the licence number, the licence type as B2C or B2B, and the current status.

That last field is worth reading closely rather than glancing at. The register records four statuses: Active, Suspended, Revoked and Expired. Three of those mean the operator is not currently licensed, and only one of them looks like a failure at a glance.

The check that catches most problems

Match the registered name to the entity actually taking your money.

An operator’s site can display a licence that exists, held by a company that is not the one behind the site. The register gives you the holder’s registered name; your deposit page, terms and payment descriptor give you the entity you are actually contracting with. If those do not match, the licence is real and irrelevant.

Then match the domain. Licence conditions require operators to use only approved operational domains for licensed activity, and to obtain approval before changing them. So a domain that does not appear against the licence is not a paperwork lag; it is activity on an unapproved domain, which is a licence condition breach.

Finally, match the licence type to what the site is doing. A B2B service-provider licence does not authorise offering gaming to players. A consumer-facing casino displaying a B2B licence has not shown you what it appears to have shown you. Our category guide explains the difference.

What a verification result does not establish

The Authority is direct about this, and the sentence deserves quoting: “Verification does not constitute an endorsement of the licence holder’s services, products, or business practices.”

So a positive result tells you a licence exists, who holds it and what state it is in. It does not tell you the operator is solvent, that its games are fair, that it will pay a withdrawal, that its terms are reasonable, or that the Authority has reviewed any of that. Licensing status and consumer outcome are different questions, and the register answers only the first.

The Authority also warns that registry data is updated periodically, and that for time-sensitive verification, or where the register does not return the expected result, you should contact it directly. Treat the register as authoritative but not real-time.

Licence conditions make the seal itself a regulated thing

One published condition is easy to skim past and useful to know: licensees must maintain accurate representation of licence status on all platforms.

That turns a stale or overstated seal into a breach of licence conditions rather than a marketing inaccuracy. If a site displays a seal, and the register shows Suspended, Expired or nothing at all, the mismatch is itself the finding.

Revocation is permanent, and the list is currently empty

The Authority publishes a revoked-licences page. Its stated effect is unusually severe: “Revocation is permanent. A former licence holder whose licence has been revoked will not be considered for licensing in the future. Additionally, associated URLs are also permanently blocked and will not be allowed on any other license.”

Blocking the URLs as well as the company is a meaningful design choice, because it closes the usual escape route of re-registering the brand under a new entity.

What the page does not currently contain is any revocations. The table is published with its column headers, Company, Termination Date, Licence Number, Type, Domains and Reason, and no rows beneath them.

Read that carefully in both directions. It is not evidence of a cover-up; a young regime may simply not have revoked a licence yet. But it does mean there is no public enforcement record to examine, and an enforcement framework that has never visibly been used tells you less than one that has. This is the concrete fact behind the general claim that Anjouan has a short public enforcement history.

If the register does not find it

Work through the possibilities in order rather than assuming the worst.

Try the other search fields, because a domain may be registered against a holding company name you did not expect. Check the spelling of the licence number exactly as displayed. Then contact the Authority directly, which is what it asks you to do when the register does not return an expected result.

If none of that resolves it, you are left with an operator displaying a licence the register does not recognise. That is the point to stop, not the point to deposit. We are not going to tell you which specific operators fail this test, because naming an operator as fraudulent on the strength of a register lookup is a stronger claim than a lookup can carry.

A note for operators rather than players

If you hold a licence, the register is also your own exposure. Check that your entry shows every domain you actually run, that the type matches what you are doing, and that any seal on your site matches the current status. All three are licence conditions, and the first one costs EUR 500 per additional domain to put right, which is cheaper than being found operating on an unapproved one.