Remote gambling licence
A remote gambling licence is the permission an operator needs to offer betting or gaming to people in Ireland by remote means, meaning online, by app, by phone or any channel where the player and the operator are not in the same place. Under the Gambling Regulation Act 2024 that licence is issued by the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland, the GRAI, and it carries duties toward the player that a licence from Malta, Kahnawake or Curaçao does not enforce on Irish terms.
What the Act means by a remote gambling licence
The Gambling Regulation Act 2024 does not treat remote gambling as a separate trade with a separate rulebook, but as a way of providing a licensed activity, so a remote licence is a Business to Consumer betting, gaming or lottery licence granted for provision by remote means.
Section 112 covers the application for a Business to Consumer licence, and section 102 sets out the extra information and documents an applicant must supply where the activity is to be offered remotely. The phrase that does the work is “remote means”, which Revenue’s older guidance described as any means of communicating and transacting with a person in another physical location, regardless of where that person actually is.
Location of the operator is irrelevant to the test.
Before the Act, the closest Irish equivalent was the remote bookmaker’s licence under the Betting (Amendment) Act 2015, issued by the Revenue Commissioners and recorded on the Register of Remote Bookmaking Operations. A land-based bookmaker could take some remote bets without one, but only while the value of those bets stayed below the lower of €250,000 or 10 per cent of its annual bookmaking turnover. Responsibility for new betting licences passed from Revenue to the GRAI in February 2026, although operators still pay Betting Duty to Revenue.
Where the player meets the licence
Chapter 5 of the Act, sections 166 to 175, lists what the holder of a remote gambling licence owes the person on the other side of the screen, and most of it shows up at registration rather than at the first bet.
Under section 167 the licensee may not let anyone gamble remotely until that person has opened a gambling account, been entered in the register of account-holders and received the account terms in writing. Breaching that section is an offence, punishable on indictment by a fine or up to five years’ imprisonment.
Section 169 then requires the licensee to verify both identity and age before opening the account, with 18 as the minimum, which is why KYC checks come before play on an Irish-licensed site and not only at withdrawal.
Sections 172 to 175 add duties on providing terms and account information, protecting children and not offering remote gambling on certain days or at certain times. What I check first, whenever a reader asks about a site, is whether those obligations come from the GRAI or from a regulator abroad, because only the first gives you the Irish complaints route.
Betting first, gaming later
The GRAI opened betting licence applications through its operator portal in February 2026 and began issuing remote betting and betting intermediary licences in July 2026. Remote gaming licences, covering online slots, roulette and other casino games, are phased for later, so until they are granted an online casino open to Irish players holds its gaming licence from a regulator outside the State.
What it is confused with, and how to check
The common mistake is to read any licence badge in a site’s footer as if it gave the protection of an Irish one.
A Malta Gaming Authority, Kahnawake or Curaçao licence is real, but its conditions are set and enforced by that regulator, and a complaint goes to that regulator or to whatever dispute body it names. The GRAI’s powers, including its account rules under sections 167 to 175, attach to the holder of a licence it issued and to nobody else.
A second confusion is between the old Revenue remote bookmaker’s licence and the new GRAI licence. During the transition both registers matter, since a betting operator may still trade on a Revenue licence while its GRAI application is processed, and the licence number shown on a site should be matched against the register of the body that issued it.
Under the Gambling (Licensing of Gambling Activities) Regulations 2025, a Business to Consumer licence runs for three years, so a licence that was valid when an operator launched is not proof that it is valid now.
You should look up the operator’s legal name, not its trading brand, on the issuing regulator’s own register, and treat a footer logo with no matching entry as no licence at all.
