FCA Sets £10,000 Registration Fee for Crypto Businesses

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has revised its fee for crypto business registration following consultation with the digital asset community.

Announced on Monday, the regulator has introduced two slab fees for crypto businesses based on their size in contrast to the previously proposed flat £5,000 (around $6500) fee for all businesses.

Per the updated structure, businesses with income from UK crypto-asset activity up to £250,000 (almost $327,000) will be charged £2,000 (a little more than $2,600) while companies with income more than £250,000 will be asked to pay £10,000 (approx $13,000).

The fee structure has been updated based on 29 responses against the previous proposals published last October.

Last month, the FCA had assumed new roles to supervise digital asset businesses and is dictating on both Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Anti-money laundering (AML) is a term that describes laws, processes, and regulations that are intended to prevent illegally obtained funds from being disguised as income gained through legitimate means. The fundamental purpose of the AML laws is to help safeguard, detect, and report suspicious activity including the predicate offenses to money laundering and terrorist financing, such as securities fraud and market manipulation.Most exchanges have AML measures that include identity verification Anti-money laundering (AML) is a term that describes laws, processes, and regulations that are intended to prevent illegally obtained funds from being disguised as income gained through legitimate means. The fundamental purpose of the AML laws is to help safeguard, detect, and report suspicious activity including the predicate offenses to money laundering and terrorist financing, such as securities fraud and market manipulation.Most exchanges have AML measures that include identity verification Read this Term) and counter-terror financing (CTF) initiatives with crypto assets.

As detailed by the market watchdog, the fees will be collected to fund its roles in the industry.

“We are funded entirely by fees and levies from the businesses we regulate. We proposed a flat-rate application charge for registration of £5,000 to recover estimated gateway costs of £400,000 from approximately 80 potential applicants known to us,” FCA stated.

A moderate fee or is it too much?

Most of the objections were made from small businesses, which saw the fees to be too high and might make a dent on their operations.

“There are costs to undertaking any business and it is not unusual for companies to budget for a loss in the early years,” the regulator noted. “One submitted evidence that direct regulatory fees and levies typically represented 3%–4% of firms’ revenue, whereas the indirect costs of compliance represented 16% of revenue for firms with revenue up to £250,000.”

The regulator recently granted a payment license to a subsidiary of the BCB Group, well-known payment service providers to crypto companies, Finance Magnates reported.