Ireland’s GRAI marks its first year with licensing, AML work, and a 30-person team

Ireland’s Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland (GRAI) officially started operating in March 2025, and its first 12 months have already been spent building the machinery that matters to operators and PSPs: licensing, AML processes, and supervision. The regulator has also started taking licence applications since February, which is the part the market actually cares about.

1. The GRAI says it has built out key functions with 30 staff already in post, while recruitment continues. For a regulator that is still in setup mode, headcount is the first signal that the licensing queue is becoming real rather than theoretical.
2. It is also putting in place anti-money laundering procedures, including mechanisms for collecting information, handling complaints, and working with domestic and foreign supervisory authorities. For payment providers, that usually means more questions, more documentation, and less room for sloppy onboarding.
3. Infrastructure for sector oversight is now in place, and the GRAI has been accepting licence applications since February. In practice, that turns Ireland from a reform story into an application-and-review process, which is the stage where operators start comparing timelines, conditions, and banking access.
4. The regulator has set six priorities for the next three years: licensing, monitoring and control, enforcement, consumer protection, organisational development and corporate governance, and digitisation of regulation. That is a fairly standard list on paper, but the ordering tells you what the authority expects to spend time on first.
5. The wider Irish reform package also includes a national self-exclusion register, restrictions on gambling advertising, and a Social Impact Fund financed by the industry. The full list of companies that have applied for the new Irish licences has not been disclosed publicly; Betfred is the only company that has said publicly it intends to apply.

For high-risk PSPs, the useful detail here is not the ceremonial “first year” framing. It is that Ireland is moving from legislative change to the practical parts: licensing intake, AML controls, and supervisory coordination. That is where underwriting standards, settlement decisions, and acceptable merchant profiles tend to get tighter.