News

Xapo gets green light from FINMA

The US bitcoin company Xapo has received conditional approval from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) to operate in Switzerland, paving the way for the company expand services from its headquarters in Zug. CEO Wences Casares praised the collaboration with the country’s regulators.

Xapo has received conditional approval from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority.

Xapo announced around 1.5 years ago that it had moved its headquarters from Palo Alto in California to Zug. Now the bitcoin storage company has announced that it has received conditional approval from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) to operate in Switzerland. The next step is for the company to join a self-regulatory organisation (SRO) as a financial services provider. SROs are supervised by FINMA and monitor their members for compliance with the country’s Anti-Money Laundering Act.

In a blog post, Xapo’s founder and CEO Wences Casares thanked FINMA for its collaboration, remarking that FINMA personnel acted in a professional and transparent manner throughout the approval process. He also pointed out that FINMA always suggested solutions when obstacles arose, and there were many.

“Bitcoin is something new and it isn’t necessarily easy to explain,” he said in an interview with the news portal Finanz und Wirschaft. “FINMA first had to understand bitcoin and then find out how crypto-currency can fit into existing Swiss law. Many regulatory bodies in similar situations would have rejected Xapo and bitcoin entirely, wrote Casares.

FINMA’s approval now positions Switzerland as a hub for fintech innovation. According to Casares, the centre of the fintech revolution is no longer in Silicon Valley but rather London. “But many of us in the fintech industry think that Switzerland is better positioned to promote fintech. It’s a good sign that our company is now officially approved. Now it just needs regulatory frameworks that will truly make the country competitive with London.”

Read more
Share

Official program