Hello Everyone,
Does anyone know the countries approved by the Malta license?
I mean if a casino have Malta license, on which countries it's allowed to operate?
Thanks
Hello Everyone,
Does anyone know the countries approved by the Malta license?
I mean if a casino have Malta license, on which countries it's allowed to operate?
Thanks
Only Malta![]()
Are you sure? but Maltese casinos are also accepting players from countries where the local regulation is not yet happened..
Also Malta is part of EU, so it's lopgica to assume that the license is ok for EU countries where gambling is not completely banned or countries with local regulation right?
Just Malta, or a country should have a law which states that Malta licensed casinos are legal. Malta is part of EU, but within the EU every country has the right to have their own gambling laws, as long as it's not discriminating, which is not the case if all gambling sites are illegal.
ocreditor (24 February 2020)
Several months have passed, maybe someone has this list of countries or maybe part of it. I was looking at the mga.org.mt and other sites, but everywhere the same articles about the type of license, etc. but I haven't seen countries.
There is no such list. Most of the gambling licenses like MGA, curacao, Gibraltar are basically meaningless when it comes to country based regulation and licensing. The licenses are worthless and are simply created to make money for the licensing companies.
The idea of course is that these licensing companies make some kind of industry standard, so casinos who operate under such licenses can be “trusted” by the mass. In reality though, all of these companies do pretty much nothing when it comes to checking online casinos, checking AML issues and things like that.... their only goal is to make as much money as possible without doing any work.
However, from a casino owner point of view these licenses have become mandatory for several reasons:
1. as simple people (read: the players) link these license seals with trust, no matter if it is true or not, this basically means that if you run an online casino without such licenses people will most likely think the casino is shady or not to be trusted.... so even though an MGA license says nothing, as a casino owner its a must have to build trust among players.
2. to be able to integrate payment systems to your online casino, or to open corporate accounts, banks and payment providers only work with you if you have such licenses. These are not official rules, but in reality all payment companies use such rules. This is also why curacao licenses are completely worthless in a year or two... at the moment of writing 99% of all banks and payment providers do not accept casinos with curacao licenses anymore... basically meaning that such licenses become completely worthless...
You have to compare the licenses with certificates, awards and seals that are used for products and services. For example, lots of wine companies use stamps that says something like “awarded as best wine of 2020”. Sounds nice, but as a company you can just buy these awards... or only three companies are eligible to these awards (so you always end up place 1,2 or 3)... its all just marketing... and as most people are stupid, they all believe such things.
When it comes to country based gambling its very simple: the country has A) laws that regulate gambling, or B) no laws (yet) that regulate gambling.
You are probably talking about those countries from option B, so countries that have no laws for gambling. However, the big misconception here is that “no laws” doesn't mean gambling is legal...it just means that there is no specific law for it. In reality, some of these countries don't have any enforcement and therefore basically “allow” local/foreign gambling companies...but still that doesn't give any MGA licensed company to operate legally in such countries... they are just not enforced at current time... and, this also means any other casino without a license can target such countries as well with the exact same rights and limits as casinos with an MGA license...
Long story short, the licenses are only meaningful for cooperations with payment companies and banks and for trust for players... they don't give the companies that holding such licenses any rights to operate in any country (besides the country from the license company probably, such as malta and curacao).
What you see now is that we are moving towards a regulated market in which every country has its own regulations and own licensing authority. perhaps the EU will come with an Europe wide model, but im pretty sure it wont be MGA. In about 5-10 years all current licenses such as MGA, curacao, Gibraltar, isle of man sill become completely worthless and obsolete... simply because there will be no grey areas anymore.
On a side note: you sometimes see that when applying for a specific country license an MGA license can give you some extra benefits... simply said: local authorities will give MGA licenses some value, as they assume that you have proven yourself to be a trusted casino...so you have build some credits and will most likely get a license faster... But ok, also here, in most cases its all about money. if you have enough funds you can comply to all rules easily which basically means that if you have enough money you can get a license anywhere you want...
Last edited by mediapartner; 28 November 2020 at 3:10 pm.
Life is a gamble
CasinoGuy3 (21 August 2022), chaumi (21 August 2022), ocreditor (29 November 2020)
Great post. Would also be interesting to find an up-to-date list of grey markets which are not being enforced.