Key Points
- Georgia’s international iGaming licence formally launched on September 28, 2026, with GISG publishing a 6% total GGR charge and MCC 7995 payment processing arrangements for international operators.
- Parliament has expressly blocked Georgian citizens from the licensed platforms; 1.577 million people were registered on the national exclusion register as of December 2025.
- GISG has confirmed further operator-facing changes for October 2026, with the first licensees described as preparing to go live.
Georgia formally moved its international iGaming licence regime from pilot to full operation on September 28, 2026. Random Systems Georgia (RSG), the government’s designated Selected Person responsible for electronic control, certification and system monitoring, confirmed the development. The Revenue Service, as the state authority handling gambling permit issuance, sits alongside RSG in the governance structure. The first operators are described as preparing to go live. How many will commit real business to the jurisdiction is the question this launch has not yet answered.
What the Licence Actually Offers?
Georgia’s commercial proposition centres on a package published by Georgia International Strategic Group. GISG, the exclusive authorised representative for international operator licensing, publishes a combined charge of 5% GGR and a 1% regulatory monitoring fee, presented as 6% all-in on gross gaming revenue. GISG also presents reinvested profits as attracting 0% corporate income tax, with distributed profits subject to 15%. These are GISG’s published commercial terms, not confirmed statutory figures. Operators should verify the complete tax treatment independently, as the Tax Code contains separate gambling profit-tax provisions applicable to this activity.
Three permit categories are available: online casino, slots, and sports betting. Each carries an annual fee of GEL 100,000 per category, confirmed by the enacted legislation. Parliament adopted the framework on June 25, 2026, with the Revenue Service confirming the new permit categories on July 3. GISG confirms that no mandatory operating office is required for international operators. A Georgian legal address and backup server infrastructure within the country are still needed. Georgian citizens are expressly excluded from the licensed platforms by parliamentary statute.
MCC 7995: Why Banking Matters More Than the Tax Rate?
Licences are straightforward to legislate; banking takes considerably longer to deliver reliably. Georgia has deliberately structured both within the same framework. MCC 7995, the merchant category code designated for gambling transactions, is built into the banking arrangements for international licensees from day one. Having a gambling-coded merchant designation from the outset removes a persistent friction point for operators establishing payment relationships.
RSG says it built the framework to unite the government, Ministry of Finance, Revenue Service, regulators, and banking sector under one governance structure. GISG says banks are already onboarding applicants and the regulator responds to enquiries within days. Both statements come from the regime’s promoters; no independent banking or regulatory source has corroborated these claims.
Vakhtang Katamadze, RSG Supervisory Board Member, stated at the full launch: “Georgia is not building another licensing jurisdiction. We are building a country-level ecosystem for international iGaming.”
Tbilisi’s Existing Operational Footprint
Georgia’s pitch for international operators is not starting from an empty room. Major iGaming businesses including Evolution Gaming, Flutter, Entain, Betsson, Spribe, and SmartSoft already operate in Tbilisi, spanning software development, live casino studios, and customer support. Industry reporting attributes around 2 to 3% of Georgia’s GDP to this sector’s presence. No primary national economic source has independently confirmed that estimate. Licensing and financial infrastructure has historically stayed outside Georgia; capturing that activity is what the government is now pushing for.
Katamadze has framed Georgia’s competitive aim directly: “We do not want to become the Malta of iGaming; we want to become its Switzerland.” The argument moves past headline tax rates into regulatory credibility and banking certainty. Operators increasingly need institutional confidence to retain payment partners and attract investors.
How Georgia Compares to Established Hubs?
The Malta Gaming Authority’s 2024 Annual Report puts the iGaming sector’s contribution at €1.386 billion in gross value added, representing 6.7% of the Maltese economy. Malta’s gaming tax applies to qualifying gaming revenue under a rate structure tied to that revenue basis. Georgia’s 6% all-in, as published by GISG, sits slightly above Malta’s gaming tax rate. Banking and payment arrangements bundled into the Georgia package are typically excluded from such comparisons.
GISG’s stated targets are not drawn from Malta’s established operator base. Western operators “tired of taxes and bureaucracy” and Asian businesses seeking clear regulatory rules are named priorities. CIS and Central Asian companies without a settled regional home are also explicitly targeted. Estonia moved in December 2025, with parliament approving a staged gambling tax reduction to 4% by 2029, aiming to attract internationally mobile operators. Georgia is pursuing a similar competitive logic across a distinct geographic base.
The Domestic Policy That Complicates the Story
By end-2025, 1.577 million people were registered on Georgia’s national gambling exclusion register, a figure confirmed by the Revenue Service. Against a reported population of 3.7 to 3.9 million, this represents over 40% of Georgia’s residents as of that date. Georgian nationals must be 25 or older to participate in gambling; foreign nationals are permitted from 18. Domestic casino and slots activities serving Georgian players carry a 20% GGR rate. Online betting for Georgian residents operates under a different tax basis and rate.
The Georgian Gambling Association has separately warned of annual outflows exceeding GEL 2 billion, roughly $742 million, to unregulated offshore platforms. The international licence is designed to attract inbound foreign operators, not to redirect Georgian residents back into a regulated environment. None of the reviewed sources addresses how these two parallel policy tracks will interact as the regime matures.
What October Will Signal?
GISG has confirmed further changes to operator terms will be announced in October 2026, without disclosing the specifics. Katamadze was direct about where credibility ultimately comes from: “Trust is not written into law; it is earned in practice. Georgia is earning it now: banks are onboarding operators, the regulator answers in days, the first licensees are preparing to go live.”
Expert Analysis: The Question the Industry Is Not Raising
There is a structural tension at the centre of Georgia’s international offer that the reviewed sources have not directly examined. A government placing over 40% of its population on a gambling exclusion register is building an international gambling licensing framework at the same time. The Georgian Dream government is transparent about this design; the two-track architecture is the explicit policy, not an inconsistency it is hiding.
Domestically, the policy logic is coherent on its own stated terms. Gambling within Georgia is treated as a social harm issue requiring tight restriction. Georgia positions international gambling as a pure export industry requiring competitive incentives. Two separate systems, deliberately built to operate in opposite directions.
We find the Switzerland analogy Katamadze keeps using is the most revealing part of the pitch. Switzerland did not build a global financial reputation by offering the lowest available rates. It built it by being reliable, consistently supervised, and credible to institutional counterparties who demanded more than a legal document. Georgia is attempting the same in iGaming, and the argument is legitimate on its own terms.
Whether AML controls, KYC procedures, and banking infrastructure hold at operational scale is what separates the ambition from delivery. A launch announcement alone is never a test of that. The harder question, absent from the reviewed sources, concerns Georgia’s central tension: gambling has been made legally accessible to the world from Georgian territory, while Georgia simultaneously maintains some of Europe’s most restrictive domestic gambling controls. As an economic policy trade-off, that position is internally coherent. Whether regulators in receiving markets will view it the same way is a question not yet being asked publicly. October’s update will be the first real signal of which direction this regime is heading.
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