Today, in Switzerland, you can run a crypto or payment business without a FINMA licence. You need a company, a compliance officer and an affiliation with a self-regulatory organisation (SRO) for anti-money laundering. That is the route most crypto founders, wallet providers and payment businesses have taken for years. That door is about to close.
What is changing
In October 2025 the Federal Council put a reform of the Financial Institutions Act (FinIA) out for consultation. It creates two new licences: one for payment instrument institutions, which will cover payments and Swiss stablecoins, and one for crypto institutions, which will cover crypto custody and trading for clients. The consultation closed on 6 February 2026. The bill still has to go through Parliament, and nobody can give you a date of entry into force yet. It will not be before 2027.
Once the new law is in force, these activities move from SRO oversight to a FINMA licence and direct FINMA supervision. A newcomer will no longer be able to start with an SRO affiliation alone: licence first, business second. And a FINMA licence is a different animal: capital, governance, people in Switzerland and months of application work before you serve your first client.
What happens to companies already affiliated with an SRO
This is the part nobody tells you. The draft law has a transitional rule. Companies already carrying out these activities when the law comes into force will have one year to file their licence application, and they can keep working until FINMA decides, provided they are affiliated with an SRO. In other words, a company that is SRO-affiliated and active on the day the law changes keeps its business running while it applies. A company that does not exist yet starts from zero, and waits.
Swiss VASP: what it means for crypto
A Swiss VASP today is, in most cases, a crypto company affiliated with an SRO: exchange, wallet, broker, on-ramp or off-ramp. Under the reform, the crypto institution licence takes over custody and trading for clients. What falls outside the new licences stays with the SRO. If you want to be a Swiss VASP, the question is no longer whether you will need a licence one day, but which company you will be standing in when that day comes.
Why buy an SRO company now
Three reasons. First, you start working today, not at the end of a licensing process. Second, you keep your place: an SRO-affiliated company that is active when the law changes can carry on while it applies for its licence. Third, you arrive at FINMA with a company that has a history, an AML file and an SRO audit behind it, not just a business plan.
And then there is the market. Every month that brings the new law closer makes setting up a new SRO company for crypto or payments less attractive, and the existing ones become rarer. In my view, their price will only go one way. If you want one, now is the time, not when everybody else wakes up.
Still weighing an SRO against a licence? Read Swiss SRO license or FINMA licence: which do you need? and Switzerland crypto SRO or licence: what changes.
What you get when you buy from us
Every SRO company we sell comes with a due diligence report from an independent professional and a warranty signed by someone who stands behind the sale. The companies on offer change often, and the good ones go first: see our Swiss SRO companies for sale. Prices are on request.
Tell us what you want to do with the company and we will tell you which one fits: write to insight@fintechlex.com or on WhatsApp +41 787 983 770.
Sources: Federal Council, consultation on the amendment of the Financial Institutions Act (22 October 2025 to 6 February 2026); draft Financial Institutions Act, transitional provision art. 74b; State Secretariat for International Finance (SIF), fact sheet on stablecoins and crypto.
Rene-Philippe
