How to Start an Online Casino: 10 Steps From License to Launch

Starting an online casino in 2026 is a run of decisions in which each one narrows the next: the markets you serve decide the license, the license decides where the company sits and which suppliers and payment providers you can use. This guide takes the steps in that order, with the published government costs, and sets out Georgia's international permit as one route among several.

The 10 Steps at a Glance

The order matters more than the checklist. A platform demo that suits one regulator can fail another's certification, and a payment provider will ask for the license before it signs. The table shows what each step settles and what waits on it.

1. Choose Your Markets and Business Model

Start with who will play. A B2C operator takes bets from players and earns gross gaming revenue, the stakes minus the winnings paid. A B2B supplier licenses a platform or games to operators and needs a supplier license instead. This guide covers the B2C casino.

The markets come before the license because many countries license online gambling themselves. The UK Gambling Commission states that transacting with consumers in Great Britain is reserved for its own license holders. International licenses carry exclusions as well: Anjouan's October 2026 license conditions bar licensees from knowingly targeting residents of Australia, Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States, among others, and Georgia's international permits exclude Georgian citizens and foreigners under 18.

2. Pick the License

The license sets the fees, the tax, the term and most of the operating rules. The table compares the licenses international casino founders weigh most often, on government charges only, with the yearly license fee apart from the one-off charges of year one and tax on its own base.

Year one also carries one-off charges, kept out of the yearly column. Georgia: a platform audit of up to about €12,000 per activity type and control-system integration of up to about €34,400 per permit holder, caps the contract settles, so up to about €58,400 for casino and slots together. Curaçao: €4,592 to apply plus €150 per beneficial owner. Anjouan: the €17,828 issuance fee in place of the first renewal, plus an application fee it does not publish. Malta: €5,000 to apply. Isle of Man: about €6,300 (£5,250) to apply. Kahnawake: about €35,700 ($40,000) to apply, including the first year's fee.

Georgia's line covers two permits because Georgian law treats online casino games and online slot games as separate verticals. The audit and integration caps are set by Government resolution, so the Georgian gambling license cost in year one depends partly on the operator's contract, and from year two only the permit fees remain, with 5% tax and a 1% monitoring fee on gross gaming revenue every month.

Fees are one input. Payment providers and game studios weigh the regulator behind the license, and the term matters for planning: Georgia's permits run five years, Malta's ten, Curaçao's is indefinite since December 2025, and Anjouan's is renewed every year. On 8 December 2025 the Central Bank of the Comoros said the Anjouan authority is not recognised in the Union of the Comoros and that no online betting or gaming license has been issued there.

3. Set Up the Company Where the License Needs It

Most regulators license a local company. Curaçao grants its license only to a company established under Curaçao law with its registered office there, sends its invoices to the company's local director, and has deferred its wider local-substance rule to 1 April 2027. The Isle of Man wants a Manx company with at least two resident directors, and Malta an entity established in the European Economic Area with €100,000 of paid-up share capital for casino games.

Georgia issues its permits only to entrepreneurs registered in Georgia, in practice a limited liability company. The owners and directors can be foreign and there is no minimum capital, but the application names the address in Georgia from which the games are managed and the address where the server infrastructure sits. Setting up an iGaming company in Georgia also means a Georgian bank account early on, because the application carries a bank receipt for the permit fee and proof of where those funds came from.

4. Choose the Platform: Turnkey, White Label or Your Own

The platform is the player account system, wallet, back office and game integration layer. The table compares the ways to get one.

Whether a white label is possible at all is a licensing question. Georgian permits are issued to the operator, cannot be transferred and cover one website each, and the law's closed list of permits has no sub-license, so a brand serving players under Georgian law holds its own permit. The choice between a white label and your own license therefore comes down, in Georgia, to turnkey or own build. Either way the platform needs an authorization certificate from Random Systems Georgia, the company that runs the state's control system, before the permit application goes in.

5. Sign Game Suppliers

A casino catalogue comes from game studios directly or through an aggregator that bundles many studios behind one integration. The commercial terms are usually a share of the gross gaming revenue each game produces, and the regulatory terms depend on your license.

Regulators vet the supply chain. A Georgian permit holder may only use games and essential products from a supplier holding a Georgian supply permit, and the application names the supplier's permit number and attaches the contract (gambling law Art. 29(4)). Curaçao requires its approval before a licensee enters a relationship with a platform, game or payment supplier, and from 24 December 2026 suppliers to Curaçao operators need their own B2B license. Anjouan asks its licensees to show that platform and content suppliers hold an Anjouan B2B license or recognition certificate.

6. Set Up Banking and Payments

Card networks treat online gambling as high risk. Visa's Core Rules require an online gambling merchant to hold a valid license for its website and to identify gambling transactions with merchant category code 7995, and an acquirer may normally take transactions only from merchants in its own country. Expect to show the license, the company documents, ownership, the AML program and the list of markets you serve before any acquirer or payment provider signs.

Players expect cards, e-wallets, bank transfers and the local methods of their country, and each provider decides market by market whether it will process gambling. Crypto depends on the license: Curaçao allows virtual currencies that trade on licensed exchanges, the Isle of Man approves set models, and Georgian law offers no lawful crypto deposit route for international permit holders today.

Georgian-licensed operators already take Visa, Mastercard and American Express deposits, with channels at TBC Bank, Bank of Georgia and Liberty Bank, and Georgia's 2021 ban on gambling payments covers only payments by Georgian residents to foreign gambling companies. No Georgian bank has yet said publicly that it acquires card payments for international permit holders, so a bank account for a gambling company and card acquiring are two separate conversations to start early.

7. Build In KYC, AML and Responsible Gambling

Verification, limits and self-exclusion are license conditions, not features to add after launch. In Georgia every online gambling organizer is an accountable person under the anti-money laundering law: each player is identified and verified at registration, suspicious activity is reported to the Financial Monitoring Service the same day, records are kept 5 years, and the compliance officer sits at senior management level. The gambling law adds a fresh verification of every player each year.

Receipts, winnings and payouts above about €17,200 are reported to the Financial Monitoring Service within 5 working days, and a new permit holder registers with it within 10 business days of the permit. AML compliance for Georgian gambling operators also links each player's identity data to their transaction history, so the platform's player and payment records have to talk to each other from day one.

8. Hire the Team

A small casino still needs named people for compliance and AML, payments and fraud, customer support, player retention and VIP care, affiliate management, and finance. Support load follows deposits and withdrawals, so cover across time zones matters more than headcount on day one, and the finance function has monthly deadlines in Georgia, where gambling tax is calculated and paid every month.

Tbilisi already has the industry's people. Evolution's 2025 annual report names Tbilisi as its largest hub, with 4,813 staff in Georgia at the end of 2025. Average gross monthly earnings in Georgia were about €821 in the second quarter of 2026 and about €1,513 in information and communication, according to Geostat.

9. Plan Marketing Within Each Market's Rules

Affiliates, search, paid media, streamers and social channels all work, and each is governed by the market the player sits in. Affiliate commission is usually a share of the revenue a referred player generates or a fixed fee per depositing player, and the tracking has to be in place before the first partner sends traffic, because it cannot be applied backwards.

Georgia's own advertising law bans gambling ads in any form inside the country, with exceptions for the licensed operator's own website, sports sponsorship, gambling venues and international airports and border crossings. For an international permit holder that matters less than it sounds, because Georgian citizens cannot play anyway; the rules that shape the plan are those of the countries you target.

10. Budget the First Year

Government fees are the one cost that is published. Everything else depends on the platform model, the catalogue and how fast you want to grow, so the honest way to budget is to price the fixed fees exactly and get quotes for the rest.

The costs to get quotes for:

• Platform. A setup fee plus a monthly fee or a share of gross gaming revenue for turnkey; development and certification time for your own build.
• Games. A share of each game's gross gaming revenue to the studio or aggregator, sometimes with monthly minimums.
• Payments. Per-transaction fees, rolling reserves held by the acquirer, and chargebacks.
• Hosting. Servers in the license country where the regulator requires it, as Georgia, Curaçao and the Isle of Man do.
• People. The roles in step 8, plus legal and accounting support.
• Marketing. Affiliate commission, bonuses and media.
• Player funds. Cash to pay winnings at all times, kept apart from operating money where the license requires it.

Starting an Online Casino Under a Georgian Permit

Under Law No. 1822 of June 2026, the Georgian online casino license is in practice two international permits, casino games and slot games, each with its own website and domain. The route runs like this, with the published maximum for each step:

1. Register the Georgian company, open the bank account and arrange the management address and server hosting in Georgia. These run in parallel with everything below.
2. Register on Random Systems Georgia's portal, approved within 5 days, and sign its service agreement.
3. Pay the audit fee; the initial audit of the platform and games starts within 20 days and takes up to 45 days.
4. Integrate with the control system, up to 30 days, and receive the authorization certificate within 2 days after.
5. File with the Revenue Service and pay the first year's permit fees. The decision comes within 20 days, or the permit is deemed issued.
6. Register with the Financial Monitoring Service within 10 business days and file the first monthly tax return.

Adding sports betting means a third permit, the international totalizator, with its own fee, a prize fund security of about €3,400 and a different operating model, since running an online sportsbook adds odds feeds and a trading desk to everything above.

How to Start an Online Casino FAQ