The Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) has called on its licensees to participate in three public consultations launched by the EU’s new Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA), warning that the draft Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) will directly affect how gambling operators across the EU apply customer due diligence, transaction definitions and enforcement outcomes.
The consultations cover: (1) Customer Due Diligence (CDD) requirements under the Anti-Money Laundering Regulation (EU) 2024/1624, including what information should be collected and how CDD should be applied consistently; (2) criteria for identifying business relationships, occasional transactions, and linked transactions—a key issue for gaming where multiple deposits or bets may be aggregated for threshold purposes; and (3) enforcement standards on pecuniary sanctions, administrative measures and periodic penalty payments under Directive (EU) 2024/1640, which will influence how breaches are assessed and penalised.
For compliance teams, the timing matters. AMLA’s enforcement RTS consultation closes 9 March 2026 (23:59 CET), while the CDD and transaction-criteria consultations run until 8 May 2026. MGA is effectively telling operators to use this window to pressure-test the practicality of the drafts—especially around evidence standards for source-of-funds checks, trigger thresholds, and how “linked” activity is defined for non-financial obliged entities like gambling.
Strategically, the message is clear: AMLA will not just harmonise rules on paper—it will standardise supervisory expectations. Operators that submit focused feedback now can help reduce ambiguity later, and better align future audits, controls and customer journeys with the final RTS.
