Gambling licences explained
A licence number in a footer tells you very little on its own. These pages set out what each regime actually supervises, what happens if you have a dispute, and which operators on the register sit under it.
What does a gambling licence show on this register?
By stated authority, the 24 operators on this register split 13 Curaçao, 10 Anjouan, 0 Costa Rica and 1 elsewhere. 18 of the 24 were found in the issuing authority's own register and 6 were not. 7 carry a term recorded as ended or a status of expired, revoked or suspended.
Documents last checked Reviewed by CryptoGuardz Register Desk, editorial desk
The Curacao Gaming Authority publishes two records of the same licence, and for several operators on this register they disagree: the certificate page an operator embeds in its footer says Active, while the authority’s own registry says the term has ended. We documented which operators, with both sources.
| Jurisdiction | Public register? | Player complaints? | On the register |
|---|---|---|---|
| Curaçao | Yes, queryable | Yes, via the Gaming Authority | 13 |
| Anjouan | Yes, queryable | Limited | 10 |
| Costa Rica | No gambling regulator exists | None | 0 |
18 of 24 licences were found in the issuing authority's own register; the 6 not confirmed are 1 Curaçao, 4 Anjouan and 1 Other.
- found in register
- 18
- not confirmed
- 6
| Operator | Authority | Found in register | Register status |
|---|---|---|---|
| BetFury | Curaçao | yes | Assessment in progress |
| Bitcasino | Curaçao | yes | Indefinite |
| Cloudbet | Curaçao | yes | Assessment in progress |
| Duelbits | Curaçao | yes | Assessment in progress |
| Jackbit | Curaçao | yes | Assessment in progress |
| mBit | Curaçao | yes | Indefinite |
| Rollbit | Curaçao | yes | Expired |
| Roobet | Curaçao | yes | Indefinite |
| Shuffle | Curaçao | yes | Indefinite |
| Sportsbet.io | Curaçao | yes | Active, with no expiry recorded |
| Stake | Curaçao | yes | Assessment in progress |
| Thunderpick | Curaçao | yes | Assessment in progress |
| Vave | Curaçao | no | no data |
| BC.GAME | Anjouan | yes | Valid |
| Bets.io | Anjouan | yes | Valid |
| Coins.game | Anjouan | yes | Valid |
| Flush | Anjouan | no | no data |
| FortuneJack | Anjouan | yes | Valid |
| Gamdom | Anjouan | no | no data |
| Metaspins | Anjouan | yes | Valid |
| Rakebit | Anjouan | yes | Valid |
| Wild.io | Anjouan | no | no data |
| Winz.io | Anjouan | no | no data |
| Lucky Block | Other | no | no data |
The three questions worth asking about any licence
Can you find it? Not whether a number is displayed, but whether the authority that supposedly issued it lists it. Some regimes publish a searchable register, some publish a validator, and some publish nothing at all, in which case nobody can confirm the licence including us.
What does it currently say? A licence in a register still carries a validity period and a status. Entries read as expired, under assessment, suspended or revoked while the operator continues displaying the number unchanged. The status field is the useful part and it is the part nobody quotes.
What happens if you have a dispute? This is where offshore regimes differ most from European ones. Some run a genuine complaints process. Others give you a company name and nothing else. Neither offers deposit protection or an ombudsman with binding powers, and any affiliate implying otherwise is selling something.
A trap that produces false findings
Some licence validators return an invalid or not-found result for any bare domain queried without the operator’s own seal token. That is how the tool is built, not evidence the operator is unlicensed, and it is easy to publish as a finding by mistake.
Before drawing a conclusion from a negative result, test the same validator against an operator you already know is licensed. If that also returns negative without a token, the tool is telling you nothing either way. We check this before recording any licence as unverified.
What we record, and what we refuse to
We record a licence as verified only when we have located it in the issuing authority’s own register or validator. An operator’s footer is not evidence of that operator’s own licence.
Where a register cannot be queried, we record the licence as asserted and unconfirmed. That is deliberately different from saying it is invalid, and we do not let the two collapse into each other. An absence of confirmation is a fact about our ability to check, not about the operator.
The same question, asked in 5 other markets
The licence question changes shape by market, because what a player is comparing an offshore licence against is their own regulator. These are the same check written for ten of them, including the tax position in Finland, the AAMS comparison in Italy and the iDEAL payment route in the Netherlands.