Seychelles Market Opinion
THE INTERNAL CONTROL SYSTEM COMES FIRST No operator goes live on its own say-so. Te rules require an Internal Control System to be submitted to, and approved by, the FSA, normally as part of the licence application. It has to document everything from accounting and transaction recording to data protection, responsible gambling, disaster recovery and AML/CFT controls. Once approved, you cannot quietly change it: material changes must be notified to the FSA, in most cases within three business days, and approved before they take effect.
AML/CFT RUNS THROUGH EVERYTHING Te Interactive Gambling Rules do not stand alone. Tey sit on top of the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism Act. A licensee must take reasonable steps to establish a player’s identity before allowing them to gamble, and apply customer due diligence under that Act, ordinarily before the player is registered, though the Rules permit it to be completed shortly afterwards in limited, low- risk cases. Where due diligence cannot be completed, the player is not onboarded, and any existing relationship is terminated. Players must be 18 or over, identified and verified. For anyone who has run an MLRO function, this is familiar ground and likely to attract close regulatory scrutiny.
THE REPORTING NEVER STOPS Licensing is the quiet phase. After go-live, a monthly regulatory return is due by the 20th of each month for the preceding month. Audited IFRS financial statements must be filed within three months of the year-end. Te system itself must produce player-session, revenue, performance, significant-event and progressive-jackpot reports on demand. Records are kept at the Seychelles registered office for at least seven years, and an independent penetration test must be submitted annually for any internet-facing system.
PLAYER PROTECTION IS WRITTEN INTO THE LAW Responsible gambling is not a policy you bolt on; it is built into the Rules. Every page of the site must link to a responsible- gambling policy. Operators must offer, at a minimum, deposit limits and self-exclusion, alongside loss, wager and session- time limits and in-game reality checks. A request to tighten a limit takes effect immediately; loosening one triggers a seven- day cooling-off period; and returning from self-exclusion requires a risk assessment. With regulators worldwide pushing hard on player protection, Seychelles has placed itself on the right side of that line.
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WELLINGTON MANJENGWA Founder, Albright Compliance Advisors and Victoria Chartered Certified Accountants
Wellington Manjengwa is the Founder of Albright Compliance Advisors and Victoria Chartered Certified Accountants, based in Victoria, Mahé. He acts as outsourced Compliance Officer and MLRO for FSA-licensed entities advising on AML/CFT frameworks, internal control systems, licensing readiness and regulatory strategy across the Seychelles financial services sector, with an emerging focus on interactive gambling compliance.
www.albrightcompliance.com
compliancesupport@albrightcompliance.com
THE DETAIL OPERATORS MISS Two points routinely catch people out. First, virtual assets. Te Rules define them carefully and then prohibit interactive gambling using virtual assets outright. In a jurisdiction that built a dedicated VASP regime in 2024, which surprises crypto-minded operators, and the prohibition is absolute. Second, the excluded jurisdictions. Te First Schedule bars
licensees from engaging in business with or soliciting clients from 16 excluded jurisdictions, including the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Japan, Qatar, Cyprus, Malaysia, Russia and others. Build those exclusions into your geo-blocking from day one, not after a complaint lands.
Seychelles has done something useful here. It has replaced ambiguity with a clear, supervised framework, and set the bar high enough to be taken seriously without pricing out genuine operators. But the licence is the start of the obligation, not the end of it. Te operators who do well in Seychelles will be those who
treat compliance as an operating discipline rather than a launch formality.
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