Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) granted Seba and Sygnum the first license, which allows them to carry provisional banking. They are also issued with securities license which will enable them to offer improved services investing, lending, deposits, and withdrawals using cryptocurrency. This makes the platforms serve as asset managers, regular banks, and other financial institutions.
The licenses were granted in August, but the banks were not allowed to publish their prospectus about the services and any other information yet. These banks will offer bank accounts to crypto entrepreneurs and crypto traders who are denied banking services because of the risky reputation of crypto companies. Stefan Deiss, founder, and CEO of Blockchain Propulsion praised the decision of FINMA and how this move can benefit the future of banking in Switzerland.
Both the banks are expected to be fully operational in a month. Once that happens, these banks will be allowed to issue, manage, store, and trade cryptocurrencies and convert the fiat assets to crypto. Along with this, the banks will also provide additional services like brokerage, custody, and tokenization for digital assets. This move has also given hope to many other companies like veteran crypto financial services like Bitcoin Swiss.
Switzerland is one of the leading countries in the world to adopt digital ledger technology(DLT) and to adopt tokenized digital assets. European banking hubs are also setting up a meeting with Libra representatives to discuss the acceptance of Facebook proposed digital currency.
Many places like Germany, Luxembourg, and Liechtenstein are moving ahead in the direction of accepting DLT, and none of them have given a license for a bank that is dedicated to cryptocurrency. Malta is also busy introducing regulations that would favor many crypto companies, but the startups there are facing trouble in finding banking services.
The co-founder of Malta’s Caledo agency, Ian Gauci, said that it would be hard to give out licenses like that to banking services since the process is very sturdy. Caledo provides legal and technical services to crypto clients. Switzerland is the world leader in offshore banking with an estimated worth of $8.5 trillion will still be the leader and make headlines as it’ll take care of the cryptocurrencies.
Malta is a part of the European Union where all the members follow the common rules when it comes to following the movement of goods and services. Diess added that the banking services would be interested in tying up with a banking service that is licensed to deal in cryptocurrency.
As the news of granting of license reached the masses, a Swiss investment bank Julius Berne decided to partner up with Seba.
