UK's FCA opens crypto licensing gateway with a February 2027 deadline
Crypto firms that want to operate in the UK have five months to apply for authorisation before the country's new regulatory regime takes effect in October 2027.
The UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has opened its authorisation gateway for cryptocurrency companies, giving firms that want to operate in the country until the end of February 2027 to apply, CoinDesk reported.
The five-month application window opened on Wednesday and precedes the planned introduction of the UK's new regulatory framework for digital asset firms in October 2027.
The regime has been a long time coming, with initial legislative work dating back to 2022. The UK's progress towards formal crypto regulation has appeared sluggish compared with other jurisdictions such as the European Union, whose Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation came into force in June 2023, around the time the UK's relevant act of parliament was becoming law.
Things started to take shape late last year, when it was announced that the FCA's framework would take effect in October 2027, preceded by a window for companies to apply for licences.
A head start for registered firms
CoinDesk described the February deadline as a "punchy" five-month process. Firms already registered under the FCA's existing regime, which focuses primarily on anti-money laundering, may find that much of the heavy lifting has already been done. More than 60 companies hold such a registration.
One of them is Zumo, an Edinburgh-based crypto infrastructure platform registered in 2021. It has built a "UK Cryptoasset Regulation Tracker" that sets out what the rules will require firms to do and maps the timelines for regulatory milestones.
"Everyone else publishing a tracker is a law firm or consultancy. We're developing ours as industry operators," Nick Jones, Zumo's founder and chief executive, said in an emailed announcement on Wednesday.
"Building it has meant reading the regime rules right down to the level of every individual obligation, mapping each one to the regulated activity it attaches to, and keeping that mapping current as further papers land," Jones said.
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