On October 1, Georgia moved its international iGaming licensing from pilot to full scale. The framework is not new — parliament passed it on June 25 this year, it took effect on July 3, and a three-month pilot ran first; what is new is the pace: regulator Random Systems Georgia confirmed the first licensed teams are preparing to go live, and from September GISG began promoting to the international market. This is not just another place issuing certificates. Georgia bundles the license, corporate bank account, and payment processing into one package: a five-year certificate, with an MCC 7995 native merchant code included, and card network channels running through Georgian bank gateways.
The fee structure is worth writing down. Licenses are issued by category: online entertainment venue, electronic gaming machine, and prize pool game — one certificate per category, one domain per certificate, and multiple sites require multiple certificates. Each certificate costs GEL 100,000 per year, roughly USD 36,000, valid for five years. Tax comes in two parts: a 5% monthly gross revenue tax and a 1% regulatory monitoring fee, totaling 6%. For comparison: online entertainment venues serving Georgian domestic users face a 20% tax rate. The price gap is right there, and the intent is plain — this certificate set is only issued to teams serving international markets, Georgian citizens are blocked across the board, platforms must install identification filtering, and websites must post operator information in both Georgian and English. Late annual fees incur a GEL 20,000 penalty.
For teams doing white-label platform solutions or platform solutions, choosing where to land has never been just about picking a data center. License fees, tax rates, and whether payment can use card networks — add these three together, and they often exceed the platform budget beyond gaming API integration. Georgia's approach is to bundle the three into one package: temporary certificates in hand within 14 to 30 days, remote account opening, no mandatory office. Payment access comes in three forms — hosted payment page, embedded component, and H2H direct connection, with PCI DSS-compliant operations going direct. In October there is another round of official operator terms updates, and the tax rate is said to have room to go lower. How to define the target market and how to configure licenses — this is worth laying out and calculating first.