The Malta Gaming Authority has pared back several of its proposed requirements for gambling companies working under foreign licences after industry stakeholders objected to them. On October 29, the regulator confirmed it had wrapped up its consultation on the Recognition Notice framework, which lets qualifying operators and suppliers licensed in other jurisdictions run their business from Malta without a separate MGA licence. The revised version still adds extra oversight, just with less information demanded from the companies involved.
Recognition Notices are open to companies licensed in other EU or European Economic Area countries, plus jurisdictions whose regulatory safeguards the MGA considers broadly equivalent to Malta’s own. Both B2C gambling operators and B2B suppliers can use the system, with certificates valid for a year and renewal currently costing €5,000.
The consultation kicked off in April 2026 as part of Malta’s national strategy against money laundering and terrorist financing for 2024 through 2026. The country’s 2023 National Risk Assessment had rated the Recognition Notice framework as a medium to high money laundering risk, flagging operators working without MGA recognition and gaps in supervisory standards between jurisdictions. The MGA responded by proposing extra checks at the authorisation stage and more extensive ongoing monitoring.
Industry representatives mostly backed tighter oversight but balked at requirements they saw as excessive, especially where foreign regulators already collect the same information. The MGA’s original proposal asked for full corporate structure charts, five years of regulatory correspondence, detailed financial information, and standardised legal opinions. After the consultation, the regulator agreed to ask for ultimate beneficial ownership information instead of complete corporate structures and to limit regulatory history disclosures to material licensing and fitness matters.
The standardised legal opinion template has been scrapped as well, replaced by a list of what legal opinions need to cover. Operators will report annual deposit figures within predefined ranges instead of exact values and volumes, and payment methods will be disclosed in broader categories. The changes answer complaints about commercial confidentiality and admin costs while still leaving the regulator free to request whatever it needs for compliance assessments.
B2B suppliers will be spared many of the requirements first drawn up for operators dealing directly with consumers. Stakeholders argued that companies supplying technology and services to licensed gambling businesses shouldn’t carry the same reporting load as operators handling player deposits and withdrawals, and the MGA accepted that. It plans to apply different requirements to the two groups, with more weight on the risks tied to each individual business.
Some stakeholders also questioned whether the MGA actually has the legal authority to demand everything it proposed, and the regulator admitted some requirements may need changes to the existing legal framework before they can be put into practice. It still plans to start collecting information during 2026, initially covering the 2025 reporting period and applying only to B2C Recognition Notice holders, though the exact implementation details haven’t been published yet.
A Feedback Statement dated October 26 has gone out to Recognition Notice holders and their representatives, setting out the revised proposals and the MGA’s responses to industry concerns, and the regulator’s public announcement confirms more guidance on individual requirements is on the way. Malta’s foreign licence recognition system stays in place under the revised framework with extra reporting and supervisory checks on top, although parts of the reform may still hinge on legislative changes.