If you scroll to the footer of a casino launched in the last couple of years, there is a fair chance you will find the word Anjouan. Few players could place it on a map. Fewer still know what the licence behind it involves. That gap is what this guide is for.
We approach it the way we approach every licence page on this site: who the regulator is, what the licence requires on paper, what it protects in practice, and what you should check yourself. We are not ranking jurisdictions against each other here (our licences hub does that), and we are not telling you where to play. We are giving you the tools to read the footer.
Where Anjouan Is, and Why It Issues Gaming Licences
Anjouan (also called Nzwani) is one of the islands that make up the Union of the Comoros, between Mozambique and Madagascar. It has a degree of autonomy within the Comoros, including the power to license certain financial and online businesses. Its online gaming framework rests on a Computer Gaming Licensing Act dating from 2005, which allows a company to obtain a licence to offer online casino and betting services.
For many years that framework was little used. It became popular from 2023 onwards, when Curaçao began its own overhaul, replacing its old master-licence system with direct licences and stricter requirements. Some operators who did not want to wait for a new Curaçao licence, or did not expect to obtain one, looked for an alternative. Anjouan was one of the jurisdictions that benefited. The Curaçao side of that story is explained on our Curaçao gaming licence page.
What the Licence Requires on Paper
An Anjouan gaming licence is issued to a company, not to a website brand. The licensee is expected to:
- be a registered legal entity with identified directors and shareholders who pass background checks;
- operate under the terms of its licence and the applicable regulations;
- apply anti-money-laundering procedures, including verification of player identity before withdrawals;
- use gaming software that produces fair, random results;
- publish its terms and conditions and keep records of transactions.
Those are the standard building blocks of any gaming licence. The difference between jurisdictions lies less in the list than in how strictly it is checked before a licence is granted, how actively the regulator supervises afterwards, and what happens when something goes wrong.
What It Means for You in Practice
Speed and cost
Anjouan's appeal to operators is that licences have been faster and cheaper to obtain than in the major European jurisdictions. That is not automatically a bad sign; it is the same reason small businesses incorporate in simpler systems. But it means that the licence on its own tells you less about the operator's financial depth than a licence from a regulator with high capital requirements.
Player funds
Unlike Malta, where segregation of player funds is written into the law (see our Malta Gaming Authority licence guide), we have not found an equivalent, clearly published player-fund protection requirement for Anjouan licensees. If the protection of your balance matters to you, look for what the casino itself says about how player money is held.
Disputes
This is the area where players notice the difference most. A mature regulator has a published complaints process and, often, an approved dispute-resolution service. For Anjouan, the published route for players is less developed. In practice, your first and most effective lever is the casino's own complaints procedure, followed by the regulator's contact details on the licence validation page.
Our reading: an Anjouan licence tells you the operator went through a formal licensing process and can be identified. It does not tell you, on its own, how the operator will behave when a large withdrawal is due. For that you need the checks below.
How to Check an Anjouan Licence Yourself
- Find the seal in the footer and click it. A genuine licence seal opens a validation page. Look at the web address before you read anything: it should belong to the licensing authority, not to the casino or a third party.
- Read the licensee's name. It is a company name, usually different from the casino's brand. Write it down.
- Compare it with the terms and conditions. The company named in the casino's terms should be the same entity shown on the validation page.
- Check the domains. Many validation pages list the websites covered. The site you are on should be among them.
- Check the date. A licence number with no validity date, or a validation page that has not been updated in years, is a reason to ask questions.
If any of those steps fails (the seal is a static image, the company names do not match, or the domain is missing), treat the licence claim as unverified. It may be an honest mistake; it may not.
Anjouan Gaming Licence or License?
Both spellings refer to the same thing. British English uses "licence" as the noun and "license" as the verb; American English uses "license" for both. Search engines and casino footers use either, so you may see "Anjouan gaming license" and "Anjouan gaming licence" on the same page. Nothing about the licence differs.
Warning Signs Worth Taking Seriously
Some red flags appear often enough on newly licensed sites that they are worth listing:
- a licence claim with no clickable seal, or a seal that opens a page on the casino's own domain;
- terms and conditions that name a company in one country, while the footer names a licence in another, with no explanation;
- withdrawal limits that are much lower than the deposit limits, or rules that allow the casino to cancel winnings at its discretion;
- support that cannot tell you which company operates the site.
None of these is specific to Anjouan. They are the same warning signs we list for every jurisdiction in our casinos to avoid guide.
Where to Play While You Compare
The five casinos we review are introduced below with their welcome offers. Whichever site you choose, the checks above take five minutes and apply everywhere.
