Anjouan vs Curacao License

What it is

If you play at online casinos or betting sites in Asia, you have almost certainly seen one of these two names in the footer: Anjouan or Curacao. They are the two most common offshore gambling licenses in the world, and between them they cover a huge share of the sites that accept players from countries like:

• India
• Japan
• Thailand
• Vietnam
• the Philippines

Neither place is a gambling destination in itself. Curacao is a small island in the Dutch Caribbean where online gambling is fully legal and the government actively courts operators with attractive packages². Anjouan is an autonomous island in the Union of Comoros, in the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa, which set up its own offshore licensing regime and has been issuing internet gaming licenses at a rapid pace¹.

What these licenses do is simple: they let a company legally run an online gambling business from that territory. The site is incorporated there, pays fees there, and answers to that regulator. Whether the site may accept you, where you live, is a separate question, and one this page covers below.

For a player, the practical difference between the two is smaller than it looks. Both are light-touch licenses. They give a site legal standing and a regulator to answer to, but neither offers the depth of oversight you get from a regulator like Malta or the UK. If you want the broader picture of how these fit among the world's regulators, see gambling regulators and licenses in Asia, and for the different shapes a license can take, see types of gambling licenses.

Licenses and regulator

Who issues each license

On the Curacao side, you will see several names, because the system has changed over the years. Older sites speak of a master license and sub-licenses granted under it. ACR Poker, for example, tells players its license to run the games is governed under the laws of Curacao and the sublicense granted thereunder to International Processing Services S.A.⁶. Glory Casino, targeting Bangladesh, simply cites a Curacao Master Gaming License⁷. Newer sites name the current regulators: Bitcasino says it operates under a Curacao gaming license issued by the CGA, the Curacao Gaming Authority⁸, while Casino Khajana says it is regulated and authorized by the Curacao Gaming Control Board (GCB)⁹. GCWIN99, a site aimed at Thai players, says it is licensed and regulated by the Government of Curacao and operates under the master license of Gaming Services¹⁰. If those names blur together, that is normal; the details are in the Curacao Gaming Authority and what replaced the Curacao master license system.

On the Anjouan side, the picture is simpler. Sites describe themselves as licensed by the Government of the Autonomous Island of Anjouan, Union of Comoros, as BETGOAT does¹¹, or as holding a gaming license issued by the Anjouan Gaming licensing authority, as CoinPoker's terms put it¹. Some sites, like CoinPoker's Japanese pages, name the Anjouan Gaming Authority (アンジュアン賭博局) directly¹².

What the license numbers look like

You can usually tell which regime a site is under from the license number in its footer.

The Anjouan format starts with ALSI, followed by a date-based number and a suffix. The newer Curacao direct licenses start with OGL. Older Curacao numbers, like the JAZ format, come from the master-license era. For help decoding any of these, see how to read a gambling license number.

How to check that a license is real

This matters more than which of the two licenses a site holds, because license claims are easy to fake. Anjouan runs a verification service: entering a site's details returns a validation page showing the operating status, the company behind the site and the license number. For example, the validation for coinpoker.com shows status VALID for Precise Interactive Inc under License No. ALSI-202412004-FI1⁵. Our step-by-step guides cover how to verify an Anjouan gaming license and how to verify a Curacao gambling license, and if a check fails, see fake gambling license claims.

Where it accepts players

A license tells you where a site is based, not where it may take bets. Each license carries its own list of excluded territories, and the two regimes handle this differently.

The clearest example comes from Anjouan's own register. The Internet Gaming License ALSI-202412004-FI1, held by the company behind CoinPoker, lists excluded territories of Australia, Comoros, France, Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom and USA⁵. The same license also excludes all FATF-blacklisted countries, sanctioned jurisdictions, and any territory the Anjouan Offshore Financial Authority deems excluded¹⁴. Notice what is not on that list: no Asian country appears. India, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines and the rest of the region are not excluded by the license itself.

Curacao licenses work on a similar principle: the license is territorial, and each operator decides, within its own terms, which countries to accept players from. Sites carrying Curacao licenses openly target Asian markets; Glory Casino, for instance, markets itself to players in Bangladesh on the strength of its Curacao Master Gaming License⁷, and Bitcasino runs a Vietnamese-language site under its Curacao license⁸.

Two practical points follow from this. First, an Anjouan or Curacao license does not make a site legal in your country; it makes it legal where the site is based. Second, the excluded-territories list is worth reading on the site's own terms page, because it is where you find out whether the operator has chosen to block your country. For more on this distinction, see can a Curacao license be used to accept bets in other countries.

The legal position by country

Here is the part that matters for you as a player, said once and plainly: neither license overrides local law. If online gambling is not permitted where you live, playing on an Anjouan or Curacao licensed site does not make it permitted, and the practical risk is that you have no legal recourse if something goes wrong, since the operator sits offshore and the regulator's reach is limited.

That said, the pattern across Asia is that these sites are widely available. Sites holding Anjouan licenses, like 10CRIC, are built around Indian players³. Sites holding Curacao licenses serve Thailand, Vietnam, Bangladesh and elsewhere¹⁰. Some platforms hold licenses from several regimes at once: JDCLUB9VIP, a Singapore-focused slots site, says it operates under licenses including those issued by PAGCOR and Curacao eGaming¹⁵.

Whether you may take part depends on your own country's rules, which differ for citizens, foreign residents and visitors in several Asian countries. Our country guides cover this in detail for India, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, China, Hong Kong, Macau and Cambodia.

Games and payments

In practice, the games and payment methods on Anjouan and Curacao licensed sites are broadly the same, because the license rarely shapes the product. What shapes it is the market the site targets.

Casino games dominate. Rainbet, licensed in Anjouan for the provision of online games of chance, runs the full modern casino spread¹⁶. CoinPoker, under its Anjouan Internet Gaming License, offers poker as its core product, including Texas Hold'em cash games and tournaments for its Japanese players¹², plus a slots section alongside¹⁷. Curacao-licensed sites run the same range: Bitcasino's Vietnamese site carries the standard casino catalog⁸, and JDCLUB9VIP markets progressive jackpot slots to its Singapore audience¹⁵.

Payments are where the two regimes have a reputation: both are friendly to cryptocurrency. That is a large part of why crypto-first casinos cluster under these licenses. You will typically find Bitcoin, Ethereum and stablecoin deposits alongside local payment methods, card payments and e-wallets, depending on the market. A site aimed at India will add UPI-friendly options; a site aimed at Japan will add domestic methods.

One thing to watch in the terms and conditions: the governing-law clause. ACR Poker's terms state that the license granted to you to play the games is governed under the laws of Curacao and the sublicense granted thereunder⁶. That means any dispute is framed by Curacao law, not the law of your own country, which is the practical downside of playing under any offshore license. If a dispute does arise, see how to complain to a gambling regulator and gambling ADR services.

Ownership and history

All forms of online gambling are legal in Curacao, and the government offers attractive packages for operators, network providers and service companies, which is how the island became the default home of offshore gambling². The system long worked through a small number of master license holders, each of which granted sub-licenses to hundreds of individual sites; the sublicense held by International Processing Services S.A., under which ACR Poker operates, is an example of that structure⁶. The regime has been reformed in recent years, moving toward direct licenses issued by the national regulator, which is why you now see both old-style numbers like CUR-365/JAZ¹³ and new-style OGL numbers like Roobet's OGL/2024/687/0427⁴ in site footers.

Anjouan's licensing regime is far younger and has grown quickly. It is run under the authority of the Autonomous Island of Anjouan within the Union of Comoros¹¹, and its licenses are now carried by a wide range of operators, from sportsbooks aimed at India like 10CRIC³ and BETGOAT¹¹ to poker rooms like CoinPoker¹ and casino sites like Rainbet¹⁶. The regime has also become a destination for operators moving between jurisdictions: Bitcasino, long a Curacao-licensed name, has announced it will transition to an Anjouan gaming license⁸.

For players, the history explains the present. Curacao's head start means its licenses are older, more numerous and better understood; Anjouan's growth means its licenses are appearing on more and more of the sites you will encounter in Asia. Neither history changes the substance: a license from either place is quick and cheap for the operator, and the protection offered to you as a player is light either way. For the wider context of what a license does and does not promise you, see what licensed operators must do to protect players and the risks of playing on unlicensed sites.