A gaming licence is the document an operator spends the longest waiting for, and the one it tends to treat as the finish line. It is not. Before a licensed operator can take a single deposit it needs a bank or EMI account, one or more payment providers and a set of third-party partners, and every one of them runs its own onboarding on top of the regulator’s.
The contributed piece below is about that second queue: the corporate documents that keep being asked for, the source-of-funds questions that surface late, and the temptation to keep polishing the setup while the costs run. It is written from the perspective of a corporate services provider that sits between operators and the banks and PSPs assessing them, so the view is a practitioner’s rather than a regulator’s.
Gilad Oren is chief executive and co-founder of GBO International Financial Services, a B2B corporate services provider founded in 2009 that works with iGaming operators on company formation, licensing, banking and payment arrangements. The article that follows sets out his opinion.
A gaming licence is a major step for any operator. It gives the business permission to enter the market and begin turning months of preparation into a live operation.
It does not make an operator launch-ready on its own. Once approval comes through, focus changes quickly. Banks need onboarding, payment providers have to review the company, and third-party partners want documents in place before they will start working with the operator.
At the same time, marketing plans are usually moving, and the pressure to generate revenue starts to build.
Moving from licence to launch
Most operators are already building the business while the licence process is running, whether through a turnkey platform, an in-house setup or several external providers.
Once the licence and corporate structure are in place, the job changes. The operator has approval. Now it has to get the business ready to trade.
That means banks, PSPs, company documents, payments, marketing and player acquisition all need to move together.
Why onboarding still takes time
In most cases, the work after approval is normal commercial onboarding. Banks and payment providers are checking the business before opening a relationship.
The licence is one of the key documents they request, but it does not automatically complete the onboarding process. They still need to understand the company, who owns it, how it operates and how payments move through the business. It is ordinary work, but it can still slow the operator if documents are missing, out of date or need to be supplied again to another provider.
The documents that keep coming back
Some types of company documents are requested throughout the life of the business. The certificate of incumbency and certificate of good standing are two common examples. Banks, PSPs and other third-party providers regularly ask for them to confirm that the company is active, properly maintained and legally authorised to conduct business.
To the operator, these requests can feel repetitive. The same document may have been supplied before, sometimes more than once.
For the provider asking, the document matters. It helps confirm that the company still exists in good standing, that the right people are connected to it, and that the business can move forward with the relationship under review.
The delay usually happens when the company is not in good standing. Renewal or government fees may not have been paid, or there may be unresolved changes involving ultimate beneficial owners (UBOs), shareholders or directors. Sometimes company documents are missing or have not been properly updated.
Those issues have to be resolved before the certificate of incumbency or certificate of good standing can be issued.
There is a saying in banking that after you submit all the documents, only one document is missing.
That is often how onboarding feels. The file may look complete, then an AML or onboarding team decides to look deeper. They may ask for the main UBO’s tax report, proof of old payments or details of transfers made many years earlier, when nobody remembers the full context.
These requests are usually linked to the source of funds. One last document can delay bank, PSP or partner approval, even when the operator thought the file was already complete.
The danger of waiting for the perfect setup
One of the biggest mistakes operators make after approval is waiting too long to launch.
The instinct is understandable. Operators want the best possible setup before they go live. They may want more than one banking relationship, several payment providers, every feature completed and every internal process fully optimised.
The problem is that the business keeps spending money while it waits.
Development, technology, staff and advisory costs keep running. Sooner or later, investors and shareholders start asking when the business will begin generating revenue.
At some point, waiting becomes the problem.
My view is that operators should go live as soon as the basic compliant setup is in place. The company, gaming licence and platform need to exist. The website, games and payment solutions need to work, and the operating company needs a corporate bank or EMI account.
Compliance policies, KYC, AML, responsible gaming procedures and customer terms must all be ready before players are accepted.
Once that setup is in place, the operator should move. Traffic, player acquisition and gross gaming revenue become the priority, while the business keeps improving through real market feedback.
The post What Slows Operators Down After the Licence is Granted appeared first on The Fintech Times.
