Jurisdictions

Our coverage spans 10+ jurisdictions across 5 continents. Below is the whole of it, grouped by region, with what each place is genuinely suited to. What follows is deliberately not a ranking — a ranked list of jurisdictions is almost always a sales instrument, because the ordering depends entirely on facts about your business that a list cannot know.

Where do we actually work?

Five regions, and only these entries. If a jurisdiction is not on this list, we do not claim experience in it. Each regime below publishes its own framework, and those publications rather than any summary are what an application is judged against: FINMA for Switzerland, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the Financial Markets Authority in New Zealand, AUSTRAC in Australia, and MiCA for the EU member states.

How should you actually choose?

Three questions decide it, in this order. First, does the regime have a category that matches what you do? This is the question people skip, and it is the one that ends applications. A business that holds client fiat balances, one that only swaps tokens, and one that custodies assets for third parties are three different regulated activities, and a jurisdiction may cover one of them well and the others not at all. It is settled before the country is chosen, on choosing a licence.

Second, can you meet the substance requirements honestly? Almost every credible regime wants a real local entity, a verifiable address, and a compliance officer who can genuinely perform the role rather than lend a name. Those are recruitment and procurement problems with lead times of their own, and they are the most common reason a chosen route quietly fails. Substance, cost and risk covers what that means in practice.

Third, will the licence be accepted by the people you need? Banks, payment partners, exchanges and institutional counterparties each have their own view of which permissions they will work with, and those views are not written down anywhere official. This is the question that turns an easy approval into a dead end, and it is why banking belongs in the jurisdiction decision rather than after it.

Which mistake costs the most?

Optimising for the fastest, cheapest approval. It produces a permission that looks like progress and does not let you operate, and the fix is not an adjustment — it is starting the entire exercise again in a different country, with the first attempt now sitting in your history where every future counterparty will ask about it.

The three routes we are asked to compare most often are set side by side on Swiss SRO vs EU MiCA vs El Salvador. Regimes change: the statements here reflect the position as at August 2026, and every regulatory claim on this site cites the regulator or the statute rather than a summary of one. Nothing here is legal advice, and no approval can be guaranteed — regulators retain full discretion.

How it works, step by step

1. Asia — Singapore, Hong Kong SAR

   Mature, closely supervised regimes with high credibility and correspondingly high expectations. Singapore's payments framework, administered by the <a href="https://www.mas.gov.sg/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Monetary Authority of Singapore</a>, sets clear categories for payment institutions and digital payment token services; Hong Kong operates its own money service operator and virtual-asset regimes. Both are strong choices where your customers are in the region and you can support real local presence. Neither rewards a thin application.

2. Middle East — Abu Dhabi, Bahrain

   Purpose-built financial centres that have written crypto-specific frameworks rather than retrofitting old ones. Abu Dhabi Global Market and the Central Bank of Bahrain both run dedicated regimes with defined categories for virtual-asset activity. They suit businesses that want a regionally credible base with a regulator that understands the sector, and they expect substance in the jurisdiction.

3. Europe — Switzerland, Latvia, Malta

   Three different answers to the same continent. Switzerland works through self-regulatory organisation membership under its anti-money-laundering law, supervised in turn by FINMA — the largest line of work we handle. Latvia and Malta sit inside the EU, where MiCA now governs crypto-asset service provision and its transitional period ended on 1 July 2026. If your customer base is in the EU, that end date is the decisive fact rather than a detail.

4. Americas — Canada, El Salvador, United States

   Canada's money services business regime, including RPAA registration, is a well-understood route for payments and exchange activity. El Salvador operates its own Bitcoin Service Provider and Digital Asset Service Provider regimes, which are among the more accessible frameworks for crypto-native businesses. The United States is a federal and state patchwork; scope must be defined narrowly before anything is filed.

5. Oceania — Australia, New Zealand

   Australia works through AUSTRAC registration for digital currency exchange providers. New Zealand's financial service provider registration is administered by the Financial Markets Authority and is often misunderstood as a light-touch option — registration carries obligations, and the regulator has been explicit about removing providers whose connection to New Zealand is nominal.

10+ jurisdictions across 5 continents

Related reading

Choosing a licenceSettle the category question before the country questionSwiss SRO vs MiCA vs El SalvadorThe three routes compared, factor by factorSubstance, cost and riskWhat a jurisdiction will actually require you to have on the ground