Which Businesses Need a Licence or a Permit in Georgia, and Which Need Nothing
Most businesses in Georgia need no licence. The Law on Licences and Permits contains a closed list, and an activity that is not on it cannot be made licensable by a ministry. But some activities off the list still need a registration with a supervisor, and financial services are the main example. The principle, the three kinds of authorisation, a map of who authorises what, and how to check before you incorporate.
Most businesses in the country of Georgia need no licence at all. The Law of Georgia on Licences and Permits contains a closed list of licences and permits, and an activity that is not on the list cannot be made licensable by a ministry's order. Software, consulting, design and ordinary trade are not on it: you register the company and start. The list is not the whole answer, though. Payment, lending and virtual asset services are registered with the National Bank under their own laws, and other sectors, telecoms, energy, food, medicines and education among them, have laws of their own that can add an authorisation or a registration. The question to settle before incorporating is whose list your activity is on, if any.
Closed
List of licences and permits
No other act may add a licence or a permit to it
3
Kinds of authorisation
Licence, permit, and registration or authorisation by a sector supervisor
30 days
General time limit for a licence decision
20 days for a permit; at the time of writing. Sector laws such as the banking law set their own procedures
The principle is a closed list in one law
The Law starts from restraint. The State regulates an activity by licence or permit only where it is directly connected with a major hazard to human life or health or with important state or public interests, or where it uses state resources, and only where a licence or a permit can actually reduce the hazard or protect those interests. It then fixes the consequence: the Law itself contains the comprehensive list, and no other law or subordinate act may introduce a licence or a permit for an activity that is not on it. An administrative body cannot require its own consent by regulation either. Professional activities are left to separate legislation.
The Law determines a comprehensive list of the types of licences and permits. A licence or a permit for an activity or action not provided for by the Law may not be introduced by any other legislative or subordinate act, and an administrative body may not, by a subordinate normative act, establish a licence or permit regime or a requirement to obtain its consent.
Licence, permit and registration are three different things
| Feature | Licence | Permit | Registration or authorisation |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | The right to carry on a listed activity, granted to a person who meets the conditions | The right to carry out a listed action, tied to an object such as a venue, a building or a shipment | An entry in a supervisor's register under a sector law |
| Where it comes from | The list in the Law, plus the sector law | The list in the Law, plus the sector law | The sector law alone |
| Transfer | A licence to operate cannot be transferred | Possible unless the law forbids it or the permit is tied to its holder | As the sector law provides |
| Examples | Bank, microbank, insurer, electricity distribution | Gambling, construction, authorised pharmacy, customs warehouse | Payment and virtual asset services, microfinance, currency exchange |
The Law also knows a licence to use: the right to use a state resource such as minerals, a hunting area, fish stocks or radio frequencies. It is tied to an object, is as a rule issued by auction and, unlike a licence to operate, can be transferred. Most founders never meet one.
Who authorises what: a map by regulator
| Activity | Regime | Authority |
|---|---|---|
| Bank, microbank | Licence | National Bank of Georgia |
| Payment services, electronic money, virtual asset services, microfinance, lending to more than twenty individuals, currency exchange | Registration | National Bank of Georgia |
| Brokerage, securities registrar, asset management | Licence | National Bank of Georgia |
| Insurance and reinsurance | Licence | Insurance State Supervision Service |
| Casino, gaming machine salon, betting, their online forms, lotto and bingo | Permit, by category | Revenue Service, under Ministry of Finance rules |
| Private and community broadcasting; use of radio frequencies | Licence | Set by law or Government decision |
| Electricity, natural gas, water supply | Licence | Set by law or Government decision |
| Authorised pharmacy, pharmaceutical production, clinical trials | Permit | Set by law or Government decision |
| Emergency medical care; an inpatient medical facility | Licence; permit | Set by law or Government decision |
| Construction | Permit | Set by the construction rules; objects of special importance have a permit of their own |
| Infant and baby food production; import or transit of goods under veterinary control | Licence; permit | Set by law or Government decision |
The National Bank supervises commercial banks, microbanks, microfinance organisations, foreign currency exchange offices, payment service providers, loan-issuing entities and virtual asset service providers, among other participants in the financial sector. For several of these, supervision is exercised through registration and cancellation of registration, not through a licence; no one may take deposits and lend them on without a banking licence or a microbank licence.
The list holds more than this table. Entries a founder meets less often include private security, weapons and military goods, tobacco production, pyrotechnics, a customs warehouse, a duty-free shop, international road haulage and passenger transport, taxi permits in Tbilisi and other self-governing cities, outdoor advertising, dual-use goods, plant products under phytosanitary control, waste shipments and the extraction of minerals. If the business touches any of them, read the entry and the sector law before signing a lease.
What needs no licence at all
- Software development, SaaS and IT outsourcing. They are not on the list, and the Law on Information Technology Zones states that a Virtual Zone person needs no licence or permit for its activity.
- Consulting, marketing, design, translation and other business services.
- Ordinary wholesale, retail and e-commerce, unless the goods themselves are controlled, as medicines, weapons and dual-use items are. Food has legislation of its own; read it before trading.
- Holding shares in other companies, and owning or letting property.
- Being off the list is not being outside the law. Tax registration, anti-money-laundering duties where they apply, data protection and consumer rules bind unlicensed businesses too, and a Georgian authorisation, or the absence of a need for one, says nothing about the rules in the customer's country.
A software company that added a wallet
A Georgian LLC sells budgeting software to small businesses. It needs no licence. In its second year the team plans a feature that lets users hold a balance in the app and pay each other.
- 1The software alone: it is not on the list in the Law on Licences and Permits, so there is nothing to obtain.
- 2The new feature holds and transmits money that belongs to users. That is a payment service under the National Bank's regime, whatever the feature is called, and it requires registration before it is offered.
- 3The team has three routes: register as a payment service provider, contract a registered provider to hold and move the funds, or redesign the feature so that user money never passes through the company.
- 4Had the balances been in crypto, the question would have been registration as a virtual asset service provider instead, with the same regulator.
- 5They choose the registered partner for launch, and record the decision and its reasons before a line of the feature is written.
The company never needed a licence under the Law on Licences and Permits. It needed a registration under a different law from the moment its product touched other people's money. Checking the list is the first step; checking the supervisors' perimeters is the second.
Illustrative. Whether a flow of funds is a payment service is decided on the facts under the Law on Payment Systems and Payment Services and the National Bank's rules.
How to check before you incorporate
- 1
Describe the business in verbs: sells, holds, transmits, lends, insures, stores, treats, teaches, builds, broadcasts. Product names hide the regulated act; verbs show it.
- 2
Read the lists of licences and of permits in the Law on Licences and Permits against those verbs. The consolidated text is public on the Legislative Herald of Georgia.
- 3
If the business touches other people's money, credit, insurance, securities or virtual assets, check the National Bank's registration regimes, which sit outside the list, and the insurance licences, which are on it.
- 4
If it touches telecoms, energy, food, medicines, health care or education, read the sector law for an authorisation, a registration or a recognition requirement.
- 5
Look at the regulator's register. Every issuer of licences and permits keeps a register that anyone may consult, and it shows what businesses like yours actually hold.
- 6
Where the answer is unclear, get it in writing before the company's activity is described in its documents, and check the customer's country as a separate question.
On timing, the Law's general rule is short. A decision on a licence to operate is taken within 30 days of the application and on a permit within 20 days; under the general rule a licence or permit not decided within the period is deemed issued, and a licence to operate is granted for an indefinite term unless a sector law says otherwise. Treat that as the floor of the system, not as a forecast. The period can be extended for types defined by law, and the regimes that matter most to foreign founders run on their own laws and their own clocks: our articles on payment service provider and virtual asset registration describe projects measured in months, with the regulator's discretion at every stage.
Starting a listed activity before the authorisation exists is the expensive mistake. Liability is set by the sector law, in practice a bank's compliance team asks for the authorisation before it opens an account, and a regulator's first refusal is a fact that every later application has to explain. Confirm the regime first, then build.
Next step
Find out which regime applies before you build
Describe the product in a few lines. We map it to the list and to the supervisors' registers and answer in writing: no licence, a registration, or a licence, and from whom. For gambling, payment, virtual asset, lending and banking files we prepare the application. We do not advise on the law of your customers' countries.
See the licensing routesWhat this article does not answer
It does not give the conditions, capital or fees of any licence: our articles on gambling permits, payment service provider registration, virtual asset service providers, microfinance and the microbank go into those regimes. It does not cover licences to use natural resources or the rules of the regulated professions. And it is a map at the time of writing: the Law was amended several times in the first half of 2026 alone, and the consolidated Georgian text we read is that of 25 June 2026. Whether a particular product falls inside a regime is a question of fact that we answer on the documents, not from a table.
General information, not legal advice. Licences and permits in Georgia are governed by the Law of Georgia on Licences and Permits and by the sector laws of each regulator; the lists, the authorities and the procedures change, and the official Georgian text governs.