Georgia launches international igaming licensing regime with 5% GGR tax and MCC 7995 payments setup

Georgia has fully launched its international igaming licence framework, with first operators expected to go live soon. The pitch is straightforward: a five-year licence for operators serving overseas players, plus banking, payments and compliance arrangements, including gambling-coded MCC 7995 processing.

1. Random Systems Georgia (RSG), the firm appointed by the government to advise and oversee the regime, said the full launch is now underway after a soft launch in July. Vakhtang Katamadze, a supervisory board member at RSG, described the model as a country-level ecosystem rather than a standalone licensing jurisdiction.
2. The framework is aimed at operators targeting players outside Georgia, not Georgian citizens. Access will be limited to foreign nationals and stateless persons, with Georgian citizens automatically blocked from the platforms.
3. Operators will pay a 5 per cent tax on gross gaming revenue plus a 1 per cent regulatory monitoring fee, along with an annual permit fee of GEL 100,000 (€33.370) on five-year licences. Reinvested profits are subject to 0 per cent corporate tax, and onboarding can be completed remotely, with no requirement for a physical office in Georgia.
4. The legislation was submitted to parliament under an accelerated procedure in June and amends the Law On the Organisation of Lotteries, Gambling and Profitable Games. It introduces permits for companies offering online slots and sports betting to non-Georgian players, and each licence is valid for a single website.
5. Non-compliance has a price tag too: failure to meet licence conditions or payment deadlines would trigger fines of GEL 20,000 (€6,670). The state is positioning the offering around existing infrastructure in Georgia, where GISG says software providers, live casino operations, game studios and customer-support functions already serve international companies.

For high-risk operators and their PSPs, the point is not just the licence. Georgia is bundling licensing, payments and compliance into one package, and explicitly referencing gambling-coded MCC 7995 processing, which is the sort of detail acquiring teams actually care about before they touch the file.