This week, the Danish Gambling Authority (DGA) has announced its certification program for providers of online casinos, online betting, and land-based betting has been updated. The updated certification process should be enforced by next year, however, a final date has yet to be determined.

Stakeholders in the industry can comment on the update before the final version has been issued. The DGA requires comments to be sent in by August 31, 2021, via a contact form. A possible transition period will be provided for the issuance of the updated program.

General Requirements

There are several changes to the general requirements by the Denmark regulator. In the past, a testing organization had to have three years of experience or more to offer services in the region. Now, that requirement has been removed. This allows newer organizations to provide certification services. The DGA determined it is more important to consider the people involved in the work instead of the company’s overall experience.

In the past, testing required an ISO 17020 accreditation. Now, only ISO 17025 will be accepted. This is the number targeted at testing. This focuses on the specifications and conditions involved in laboratory testing.

ISO accreditation is also no longer required for test companies to offer services. This requirement was removed for verification penetration testing. This type of testing is used to review vulnerabilities within a product.

Standards for Testing

Within the changes to certification by the DGA, several standards are listed. When it comes to live casino equipment, the requirements now include roulette and card mixing tool testing. Removed from the list of requirements is that the three-second rule no longer applies. Testing will not need to determine that each event of a game will take three seconds to complete.

Along with the testing elements, the standards for general inspection have also changed. In the main document connected to general inspection, the details now include online bingo within the peer-by-peer section. This change helps to clarify that license holders for online casino gaming can also offer online bingo.

Moving forward, the description of situations where the DGA needs to give approval before new games are added or changes, will appear in the technical requirement section. The DGA plans to issue a new version of the technical requirements as it reveals the updated certification program.

Prior approval ensures that providers can report correct game data. New games do not fit into the existing data reporting requirements and can cause an issue with the system development within the DGA. The information regarding the game needs to be given to the DGA in plenty of time before it launches.