Switzerland issued banking licences to 2 blockchain service providers

For the first time, FINMA, the Swiss Financial Market Authorities, has issued banking and securities dealers’ licences to two pure-play blockchain service providers. The companies involved are SEBA Crypto AG registered in Zug and Sygnum AG registered in Zurich, which will offer services for professional as well as institutional customers. As in any case, various conditions are attached, ensuring that the businesses are set up in an orderly manner. The practise set out in the guidance published on 26 August 2019 applies in full to the supervision of the two new institutions (see hereinafter).

FINMA has consistently applied the Anti-Money Laundering Act (AML) to blockchain service providers since its emergence. In its guidance published on 26 August 2019, FINMA provides information about this technology-neutral application of the regulation to payment transactions on the blockchain. Therefore, institutions supervised by FINMA are only permitted to send cryptocurrencies or other tokens to external wallets belonging to their own customers whose identity has already been verified and are only allowed to receive cryptocurrencies or tokens from such customers. Such FINMA-supervised institutions are thus not permitted to receive tokens from customers of other institutions or to send tokens to such customers. This practice applies as long as information about the sender and recipient cannot be transmitted reliably in the respective payment system. Unlike the FATF standard, this established practice applies in Switzerland without the exception of unregulated wallets and is, therefore, one of the most stringent in the world.

The up-dated FINMA guidance can be found under: https://www.finma.ch/en/~/media/finma/dokumente/dokumentencenter/myfinma/4dokumentation/finma-aufsichtsmitteilungen/20190826-finma-aufsichtsmitteilung-02-2019.pdf?la=en