MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets)
MiCA is the EU’s harmonized regulatory framework for crypto-assets, covering issuers of asset-referenced and e-money tokens plus CASPs providing exchange, custody, and trading services. It replaces a patchwork of 27 national regimes with one license valid across the bloc.
A crypto business banking in even one EU member state now needs a MiCA-compliant structure, and banks increasingly decline crypto clients outright who cannot show a CASP license path, closing off roughly two dozen national markets at once to unregistered operators. Structuring for MiCA before approaching a bank changes that conversation from a refusal to a review.
Crypto-Asset Service Provider is the MiCA-era EU term replacing national VASP registrations for firms providing custody, exchange, trading platform, or advisory services on crypto-assets.
A Virtual Asset Service Provider is a business registered or licensed to exchange, custody, or transfer crypto assets on behalf of customers, a classification introduced by the FATF Travel Rule and adopted into national registration regimes across most jurisdictions that touch fiat rails.
An EMI licence is the authorisation a regulator grants a firm to operate as an Electronic Money Institution: issuing e-money and providing payment accounts and services.
A segregated account holds client funds separately from a firm’s own operating capital, so client money is never at risk if the firm becomes insolvent.