How We Check Curacao Licence Claims
This guide leans on primary sources only: ACMA, the Federal Register of Legislation, BetStop, the Curaçao Gaming Authority and each operator's own terms. A licence check matches four things: who holds the licence, its number, its status and the website address it approves. Operators are listed A-Z, nothing is scored, and no operator pays for a mention.
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Scope
What the Australian pages cover and leave out
Listed as information, in A-Z order, with no scores or links.
The Australian pages list Curaçao-licensed online casinos and betting sites as information, explain how Australian law treats online casinos and online betting, and say what a Curaçao licence is. Each listed operator is matched to a current Curaçao Gaming Authority record, either a domain certificate or a register entry, and to the operator's own terms. Operators run in A-Z order, with no scores, and nothing on the site links to an operator. ACMA bans the advertising of prohibited services and asks internet providers to block them, which is why the pages carry no links or calls to act.
Sources
Where each statement comes from
Primary sources only, and what they leave open stays out.
- The law or a regulator
- Statements about the law or a regulator come from the regulator's own page, the text of the Act, or the Curaçao Gaming Authority (CGA).
- A listed operator
- Facts about a listed operator, such as payment methods, limits and offer terms, come from that operator's own pages, and a value those pages do not state is left out rather than guessed.
- Not used
- Law firms, news stories and affiliate sites are not used for any of it.
Two limits are worth knowing.
Four matches
Checking a Curaçao licence in four matches
Company, number, status and website address must all agree.
A licence claim is checked by matching four things, and a match on three does not count.
The company.
The company named in the casino's terms or footer must be the company named on the CGA record.
The licence number.
It must be the same number, character for character.
The status.
The record must show the licence as active. A record of any other status is described as it is written.
The approved website address.
The record must cover the domain you are looking at. An active licence does not mean every domain falls under it, and a redirect to a new address gets its own check.
The certificate is the place to start. A CGA certificate states that a named domain "is operated by" a named company, incorporated in Curaçao with a company number, under a licence number, and gives the grant date and current status.
A licence seal on a casino site may link to it. Look at the address the seal opens: current certificates are served from cert.cga.cw, and some older seal links still point to cert.gcb.cw, which in the example we followed redirected to cert.cga.cw. A seal image alone proves nothing, because anyone can paste an image.
Register
When the register and a certificate disagree
Where records genuinely disagree, both are kept and status stays open.
The CGA also publishes a register of licensed entities. Its columns are the licence number, the licensee, whether the licence is business-to-consumer or business-to-business, the company registration number, the issue and expiry dates, and a status. It lists companies, not website addresses, so it cannot tell you which domain a licence covers.
The CGA itself warns that its overviews "do not guarantee the current validity of the licenses" and that no rights can be derived from them. A separate enforcement register covers actions that change a licence's status, such as revocation, and carries the same caution.
Numbers
Old and new licence numbers
Match the number as printed; its format proves nothing else.
Licence numbers on the register come in more than one format, for example numbers beginning OGL and others beginning CGA, with the year inside.
The format of a number does not show whether a licence is held directly or through someone else, and this guide never reads a sub-licence arrangement out of a number's shape.
Lookalikes
Lookalike seals and pages
Open the seal and match its company and address.
Some sites that come up in searches for Curaçao casinos show a licence from another issuer in their footer or terms. Those brands are not compared, and each page lists them separately as left out.
Three habits help catch a mismatch.
- Open the seal and read the page it leads to, rather than the badge.
- Check that the company on the certificate is the company named in the casino's terms.
- Read the website address on the certificate against the one in your browser, since a near-identical address is a reason to stop.
A real Curaçao certificate still says nothing about whether a service may be offered in Australia, which is decided by the Act.
No rankings
What is never scored or ranked
Listed operators run A-Z; readers get checks instead of picks.
Nothing on this site is rated, starred, scored or ordered by preference, and no page picks a winner. The listed operators run A-Z. Where a reader asks for a pick, the pages offer the checks a reader can make instead. Offer terms appear in the operator profiles as information, never in headlines, and there are no calls to sign up and no links to operators, affiliates or review sites.
Money
Commercial relationships
No operator pays this site, for anything.
There are none.
- Payments
- No operator pays for a mention or a position, and the site earns nothing from any operator.
- Changes
- If that changes, this page and every page affected will say so before the change goes live.
Help
Where to get help in Australia
One national number, and a page listing every checked service.
If gambling is causing harm, call Gambling Help Online on 1800 858 858. Our responsible gambling page lists every service this guide has checked. The CGA's licence register, for anyone who wants to read it directly, is on the Curaçao Gaming Authority site.
- Gambling Help OnlineFree phone and chat counselling, day and night; emails are answered on weekdays, usually within one business day.1800 858 858