Trinidad and Tobago Lifts Its Remote Gambling Ban, With Licences Promised by 1 January 2027

Both houses of Parliament have unanimously approved an order that removes the offence of running remote gambling from Trinidad and Tobago. The licensing regime it depends on has sat unproclaimed since 2021, and the Attorney General has now promised it by New Year's Day.

• The Senate of Trinidad and Tobago approved the Gambling (Gaming and Betting) (Remote Gambling) Order, 2026 on 2 October, two days after the House of Representatives passed it by 33 votes to none
• The order uses a power in Section 76 of the Gambling (Gaming and Betting) Control Act, 2021 to permit remote gambling, until now an offence carrying up to ten years in prison
• The Act's licensing regime has never been proclaimed, and Attorney General John Jeremie undertook to bring it into force on or before 1 January 2027
• Finance Minister Davendranath Tancoo said regulated gaming paid about TT$72.66 million (approximately $10.7 million) in tax in 2025 and argued for licensing over prohibition
• Payments are unresolved: the Central Bank has begun licensing e-money issuers, but the government had no answer to a proposal that remote gambling be paid for in foreign currency

Parliament Approves Remote Gambling Five Years After Banning It

According to the Parliament's record of the motion, Finance Minister Davendranath Tancoo made the Gambling (Gaming and Betting) (Remote Gambling) Order, 2026 on 15 September under Section 76(2) of the Gambling (Gaming and Betting) Control Act, 2021, which allows the minister to amend Section 76 "for the purposes of permitting remote gambling", subject to an affirmative resolution of Parliament. The House of Representatives approved it on 30 September by 33 votes to none, and the Senate followed on 2 October with the support of Government, Opposition and Independent senators, the Trinidad Guardian reported.

Section 76(1), as recited in the motion, makes it an offence to do anything in Trinidad and Tobago, or to use remote gambling equipment situated there, to invite or enable a person in a prohibited territory to take part in remote gambling. Tancoo told the House the penalties ran from a TT$5 million (approximately $740,000) fine and seven years' imprisonment to TT$10 million and ten years, according to CNC3 and the Trinidad Express. The order permits remote gambling by holders of a valid remote gambling licence, the Guardian reported, which opens both a domestic online market and the possibility of serving players abroad from the islands.

Tancoo described the government's approach as "license and not prohibit", arguing that prohibition drives the activity into "an underground economy that does not redound to the benefit of law-abiding citizens". Planning Minister Kennedy Swaratsingh, who piloted the order in the Senate, said online gambling "will thrive with or without us".

The Licensing Regime Is Still Unproclaimed

The order removes a prohibition; it does not create a licence. Opposition Senator Faris Al-Rawi, who supported the measure, noted that Part III of the 2021 Act, which provides the licensing regime, had not been proclaimed. "When do we expect that the giving of a licence for online gaming will actually happen?" he asked, calling it "the crux of it all", according to the Guardian. Attorney General John Jeremie undertook that the provisions needed to make online gambling operational would be proclaimed on or before 1 January 2027. Al-Rawi also questioned the speed of the order's passage and the prospect of foreign exchange leaving the country, and noted that four years had passed since the Gambling Control Commission was appointed, Focus Gaming News reported.

Independent Senator Desirée Murray proposed that all remote gambling payments be made in US dollars or another foreign currency, which she said would cap credit card spending at TT$15,000 (approximately $2,200) and keep debit cards out of gambling, and called for real age verification, deposit limits and self-exclusion. Swaratsingh said the Commission would handle several of those safeguards but acknowledged he could not answer the currency proposal. In the House, Opposition MP Keith Scotland asked what would protect young people.

Tancoo said licensing and digital payments would sit with the Commission and the Central Bank, which he said had begun licensing e-money issuers and consulting on payment systems legislation. He also set out the existing tax base: 1,150 gaming accounts with the Board of Inland Revenue paid about TT$72.66 million in 2025, of which TT$57.60 million was Club Gaming Tax, and TT$71.32 million had been collected so far in 2026. No forecast of remote gambling revenue was given.

The Vote Was the Easy Part, and the Clock Starts Now

The Act was passed in 2021, the Commission was launched in March 2022, and the part of the law that lets it license anyone has still not been switched on. Tancoo blamed the previous administration, which he said had judged that the country lacked the "sophistication and capacity" to monitor internet gambling and did not develop a framework before the April 2025 election. The unanimous vote changes the law, but the market itself rests on an undertaking. Jeremie's date leaves under three months to proclaim Part III and publish licence categories, fees, technical standards and the protections Murray listed, and to agree payment rules with the Central Bank. The test is whether all of that is ready on 1 January, not whether Part III is merely proclaimed by then.

A Remote Licence Is Only Worth What Banks and Regulators Abroad Think of It

Ministers framed the order as a chance to earn on a global scale, but the Caribbean already has established remote gambling licensors, and the regional trend is towards more scrutiny. Curaçao replaced its offshore regime with a new National Ordinance on Games of Chance in December 2024, and its regulator has since had to deal with unauthorised access to its licensing portal. On 2 October Nevis named a dedicated online gaming regulator as it prepares for its fifth-round Mutual Evaluation, the international anti-money laundering review. Trinidad and Tobago has its own record to protect: in February 2020 it became the first Caribbean Financial Action Task Force member to leave the Financial Action Task Force's grey list. A licence that payment providers and foreign regulators treat as credible needs a supervisor with a track record, and the Commission has yet to license anyone.

Foreign Exchange Is the Question Nobody Has Answered

Al-Rawi and Murray both raised foreign exchange, and the minister who piloted the order said he did not know how Murray's proposal would work. For a government that calls the order a foreign exchange earner, the risk runs both ways: domestic players betting with foreign licensees would send money out, while export revenue depends on international operators choosing to base themselves in Port of Spain. Murray's foreign currency idea doubles as a spending cap, making it a player protection measure as much as a currency one. The channelisation case is real, since prohibition has left existing online play untaxed and unregulated, but a domestic market that cannot settle payments easily will send players back to the offshore sites the order is meant to bring onshore.

Trinidad and Tobago has decided, unanimously, that remote gambling should be licensed rather than banned. Whether it has a working market on 1 January 2027 depends on a proclamation, a rulebook and payment arrangements that are not yet in place.