Jaro, you and Radka are really good admins on here and I do appreciate what you do.
However, I still need to strongly disagree on Mystake's rating. They had a Curacao licence only past a year ago - Curacao tightened things up and made a definition on these "Payment processors must be the name of the casino" and were adamant about it. It is telling the companies who left immediately after this - Santeda and Instantcasino etc all jumped ship to Anjouan temporarily which is, let's be honest, completely lawless. Even then for Santeda they were not welcomed by Anjouan and currently have no licence at all, anywhere!! Mystake have 50+ different merchants processing payments for them and none of them is legitimately allowed to collect funds for gambling - not my words - these are the words of Mastercard and Visa themselves. Add to that the ongoing campaign by Santeda specifically targeting problem gamblers which is in full view for everyone. Yeah sure, they might payout on occasion but the practices are unscrupulous to say the least and its clearly defined fraud. Nobody can go to a licencing body as they don't have one!!! Rogue would be the definition if I was on say Casinomeister.
Thanks for raising this and for contributing to such an important debate. And also thank you for the kind words about me and Jaro, we really appreciate it.
Now to the point. I fully understand that for some players, the licensing status of a casino is the key concern. And that’s absolutely fair. However, the way our Safety Index is built reflects a broader perspective. A weak or missing license results in a penalty, yes, but it doesn’t automatically define the entire score.
What weighs more heavily in our system is how the casino actually behaves in practice. Licensing is, at the end of the day, just a piece of paper. It may set a legal baseline, but what really matters is how the people behind the casino treat players. Whether they apply rules consistently. Whether they resolve issues fairly. That’s what shows their true character, not necessarily the logo on the bottom of their homepage.
If you check what drives the Safety Index score, you’ll notice that license isn’t even listed among the key positives in this case:
Very big operation based on our research and estimates
Fair terms and conditions
Not blacklisted by any major source
Very few or no complaints relative to the casino’s size
A few other factors that had a slightly negative impact
I get that in the context of this thread, our rating might feel out of sync with what some of you expected, and that’s perfectly okay.
In the end, it’s up to every player to decide where they want to play or if they want to play at all.
So once again, if you don’t play at casinos that operate outside of local regulations, you won’t have to deal with any questionable third-party payment processors, I guess.
Though I suspect the real point here is not to play at all.
