Aisha Halima, CCRP

About Aisha

Aisha joined 8day.gg in 2024 to lead the responsible gambling and compliance function, which she treats as inseparable from the editorial standard. In her view, a casino is only recommendable if it passes both the operational tests Marta oversees and the trust tests that fall to her: a verifiable licence in the regulator's own register, a documented alternative dispute resolution mechanism accessible to the player, and a set of responsible gambling tools that actually work when the player needs them, not just when the operator is being audited.

Before joining our team, she spent fourteen years in compliance roles across the fintech and regulated gambling industries, including seven years working directly with regulators on player-protection frameworks and licence enforcement in three European jurisdictions. That period gave her a specific and sometimes uncomfortable familiarity with the difference between how compliance is described in marketing materials and how it plays out when a player is genuinely at risk.

She is based in Brussels and covers all nine 8day.gg markets from a compliance angle. She reads English, French, and Dutch fluently and works with our regional contributors on the specific regulatory frameworks in Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, and the UK. Her byline appears as fact-checker on almost every hub page and as author on our trust-focused pages: Portugal's casinos-legais, France's casinos-fiables, and the responsible gambling sections across the site.

Compliance approach

The 8day.gg trust framework that Aisha maintains rests on three pillars, each of which must hold independently for an operator to earn a recommendation.

The first is licence verification: every operator on the site has been checked against the register of the regulator that issued its licence, with the number, date of issue, and current status confirmed. A licence claim that cannot be verified in the regulator's own public register is not a licence, and the operator is not listed. This is a ten-minute check that Aisha completes personally for every new operator entering our coverage, and it is the check that eliminates the majority of candidate operators before any other testing begins.

The second is alternative dispute resolution. An operator that has a functioning ADR mechanism, such as adherence to eCOGRA or IBAS, gives the player a real recourse if a dispute cannot be resolved by direct support. An operator without ADR relies entirely on the player accepting the operator's own final decision, which is not sufficient protection. Aisha maintains our internal reference on which operators subscribe to which ADR body and monitors the resolution track record of each body separately.

The third is responsible gambling tools. Every operator we recommend has to offer functional deposit limits, session limits, cooling-off periods, temporary self-exclusion, and permanent self-exclusion, with reductions taking effect immediately and increases delayed by 24 hours. Aisha personally tests these tools on every operator we add to the site by activating each in turn and verifying the enforcement.

Areas of expertise

Aisha's specialist areas include the practical differences between licensing jurisdictions (Curaçao pre and post-reform, Malta MGA, UKGC, Kahnawake, and Anjouan), the operational quality of ADR bodies serving offshore casinos, the effectiveness of responsible gambling toolkits when tested at the enforcement level rather than the marketing level, and the KYC and AML frameworks that determine whether a legitimate player will have their withdrawal processed or held for months.

She wrote the site's internal reference on the Curaçao 2024 reform and its practical implications for player protection, which underpins the licence coverage across almost every hub page. She works closely with Marta on general editorial standards and with Raymond on the compliance-adjacent aspects of payment processing, particularly PSD2 and travel rule implementations.

Background and CCRP

Aisha holds a law degree from Université libre de Bruxelles and a master's in regulatory affairs from KU Leuven. She began her career in financial services compliance in 2011, moved to the gambling sector in 2016 during the wave of European regulatory harmonisation, and has since held roles as compliance officer, head of compliance, and independent consultant advising both operators and regulators. She joined 8day.gg in 2024 to focus full-time on independent analysis.

Her CCRP (Certified Compliance and Responsible Gambling Professional) designation reflects the specialist training required to work across licensing, dispute resolution, and player-protection frameworks in regulated gambling markets. The certification is renewed biennially with continuing education requirements.

She does not accept compensation from operators, ADR bodies, or licensing agencies for editorial coverage. Any commercial relationship affecting a page she authors or fact-checks is disclosed in the site's affiliate disclosure statement. She views the separation of compliance analysis and revenue as an ethical requirement, not a professional preference.

Recent work

Selected pages Aisha has authored or fact-checked this quarter.

Contact

Aisha reads all contact-form messages relating to disputes, licence questions, or responsible gambling concerns personally. If you are experiencing gambling harm and need immediate help, please contact the helpline for your country listed on our responsible gambling page, which routes to local support faster than a message to the editorial team. For factual disputes about a page she has authored, corrections are handled within three business days with a dated changelog entry.