Cameroon

Cameroon attracted a fresh international operator entry in April 2026, with Betsson Africa going live via EveryMatrix's full turnkey stack — a probable signal of commercial attractiveness in the West and Central African region. The entry of a compliance-capable operator operating openly suggests that the market is perceived as commercially viable by at least one major international group.

Operating any money game in Cameroon requires falling under one of three statutory regimes set by Law n° 2015/012: concession (casinos, betting, public lotteries), authorisation (online and commercial games) and declaration (private lotteries). Online operation specifically requires ministerial authorisation, with the ARJ supervising day-to-day. Operating an online gaming activity without authorisation is a criminal offence punishable by 6 months–2 years imprisonment and/or a fine of CFA 5–25 million. Operators must be locally incorporated, hold a .cm domain and (for online) post a CFA 200 million bank guarantee. Licences run 5 years (online) and 10 years (land-based) and are non-transferable. No distinct B2B supplier licence class is established.

The entry pathway into Cameroon's gambling market runs through MINATD, which administers licensing on an ad hoc basis in the absence of a modernised enabling statute. The statutory basis for MINATD's licensing authority is not documented at T1 level in the available evidence, and no formal licence-category taxonomy, capital-requirement schedule, or fit-and-proper test criteria have been identified in indexed sources this cycle.

No player-protection developments — including self-exclusion frameworks, deposit or loss limits, age-verification standards, or responsible-gambling programme requirements — were evidenced for Cameroon in this research window. The player-protection baseline is structurally undocumented at the T1 level. No practical-burden assessment for player-protection compliance can be derived from available evidence. The absence of evidenced player-protection obligations does not imply their non-existence; it reflects the structural thinness of the Cameroon primary-source record. Operators should treat player-protection obligations as unknown and conduct independent regulatory engagement before designing a compliance programme.

Distribution access for gambling advertising in Cameroon changed materially this cycle through a private-platform mechanism rather than a state instrument. From 19 August 2025, Google's advertising policy permits Cameroon-targeted gambling advertising only for advertisers that are registered and licensed by the Agence de Régulation des Jeux (ARJ).

This cycle's enforcement-relevant development is not a licensing action but a payments-control mechanism. A letter from the Ministry of Territorial Administration dated 30 January 2025 designated INTOUCH Cameroun as the sole mandated aggregator for online-gambling reload and withdrawal transactions, with Orange Money and MTN Mobile Money required to suspend other aggregators' gambling-related accounts.

The directive is a ministerial instruction rather than primary legislation, making it fragile in durability terms, but it is being actively enforced and now functions as the practical mechanism through which the state can observe, and potentially restrict, gambling-related payment flows. No new licensing-enforcement event was identified in this cycle's record, and the shift from land-based licensing checks toward this structural, fiscal-and-payments form of control is best read as a change in the state's chosen enforcement lever rather than an escalation in enforcement volume.

This monitor holds that reading at probable confidence, given the corroboration behind the underlying payments claim and the absence of any offsetting statutory-enforcement signal this cycle.

Cameroon's extraterritorial regulatory reach expanded materially this cycle through fiscal rather than gambling-specific instruments. The 2026 Finance Law establishes a significant-economic-presence (SEP) standard under which non-resident digital platforms — including offshore gambling operators — with Cameroon revenue exceeding FCFA 50 million or more than 1,000 Cameroon users per year are deemed to have a taxable presence in the country regardless of physical location.

No new FATF/GABAC mutual-evaluation report, follow-up communication, or equivalent AML/CFT-status publication for Cameroon surfaced in this research window. The AML/CFT baseline is therefore unchanged, but this reflects a structural T1 coverage gap rather than an affirmative verification of a stable or compliant regime.

Ministerial authorisation for online games implies a technical review, and operators must maintain a .cm domain and local representation. No explicit server-location/hosting requirement is codified, though the .cm and local-presence requirements may imply locally accessible infrastructure. No specific RNG certification or geolocation mandate was confirmed.

No post-licence operational obligations — including reporting requirements, technical certification standards, responsible-gambling operational rules, or player-verification procedures — were evidenced from a resolvable T1 source for Cameroon in this research window. The operational-obligations baseline is structurally undocumented.

The cost-to-operate picture for Cameroon shifted materially this cycle. The 2026 Finance Law introduced a significant-economic-presence digital tax standard, effective 1 January 2026, under which non-resident platforms with Cameroon revenue above FCFA 50 million or more than 1,000 Cameroon users owe a minimum 3 percent corporate tax on Cameroon-sourced gross digital revenue, with larger operations potentially migrating to the standard 30 percent profit-tax regime.

This levy is confirmed and appears actively administered: the first compliance and filing deadline of 15 March 2026 has already passed per secondary reporting. This sits alongside the pre-existing online-Authorization entry costs — Cameroonian incorporation, a mandatory .cm domain, a 200 million CFA franc bank guarantee, and civil liability insurance — none of which changed this cycle.

Together, the new digital tax and the standing licensing-cost floor raise the effective cost calculus for any operator, licensed or offshore, seeking to serve the Cameroon market at scale.

Payments access for Cameroon-facing gambling activity remains centralised through a single government-designated aggregator this cycle. Since 30 January 2025, all online gambling payment flows — both deposits and withdrawals — must be processed exclusively through INTOUCH Cameroun, per MINAT letter No. 000061/L/MINAT/SG/DAP/SDLP; other aggregators' gambling-related accounts were ordered suspended. Permitted funding methods are mobile money (MTN MoMo, Orange Money) and card payments, all routed via the mandated aggregator.

The underlying mandate is confirmed in its enforcement but carries fragile durability, as a ministerial letter rather than primary legislation, meaning it remains a revocable executive instrument even though its practical effect on the market is settled. This centralisation creates accessory-liability exposure for any payment service provider that continues processing gambling-related transactions outside the designated channel.

This cycle surfaced an unreconciled discrepancy in the size of Cameroon's licensed operator pool: secondary sourcing places the count of active gambling licences at approximately 8 as of June 2026, against an earlier, undated count of 18. Neither figure has been reconciled against MINATD's own licensing register this cycle, and the confidence on both is accordingly uncertain.

No active consultations or draft legislation were identified affecting Cameroon's gambling sector this cycle. Instead, the 2026 developments read as administrative and fiscal tightening layered onto a stable statutory core: the new 3 percent digital services tax on offshore platforms and the continued enforcement of the January 2025 INTOUCH Cameroun payment-aggregator mandate together point toward a state strategy centred on fiscal capture and payment-flow control rather than an imminent rewrite of the 2015 and 2019 licensing statute.

This monitor holds, at probable confidence, that Cameroon's near-term regulatory trajectory will continue to run through fiscal and payments instruments rather than through formal legislative reform, though this reading should be revisited if any consultation or draft bill affecting the licensing framework itself emerges in a future cycle.