Swiss Two New Fintech Licenses Get Ready First. Switzerland is rewriting its fintech rulebook. The winners will be licensed before the losers finish reading the law.
Two new FINMA licence categories are moving through the legislative process.
New Payment Institution License
The payment instrument institution: successor to the fintech licence — the CHF 100 million cap gone, client assets protected in bankruptcy for the first time, and the only gateway to issuing regulated Swiss stablecoins.
New Crypto Institution License
The crypto-asset services institution: custody, client trading, market making, trading platforms and staking — moving from AML-only self-regulation to direct FINMA prudential supervision. Fully paid-in capital. Ordinary and prudential audit. Real client-asset protection, down the entire sub-custody chain.
What each licence actually lets you do:
| Payment Instrument Institution | Crypto-Asset Services Institution | |
|---|---|---|
| Client money | Accept client funds — no interest, no CHF 100m cap, bankruptcy-segregated | Not authorised to hold payment funds |
| Payments | Client balances, transfers, direct debits; own IBAN issuance with SIC/SNB access (volume-gated) | — |
| Wallets & cards | Full e-money wallets, debit cards, multi-currency accounts on your own book | — |
| Stablecoins | Exclusive right to issue the Swiss single-fiat stablecoin (white paper, 60-day FINMA notice); custody & settlement with per-token segregation | Basket or algorithmic coins are requalified as trading crypto-assets — they fall here, not there |
| Crypto services | — | Custody & cold-vault wallets, client trading, dealing in own name, market making (exits today’s grey zone), organised trading facility — impossible under an SRO today |
| Staking | — | Statutory basis, reserved for custodians |
| Still elsewhere | Credit, overdrafts, interest on balances → banking licence | Funds → CISA; insurance → ISA; non-custodial wallets stay outside licensing |
The consultation closed in February 2026. Entry into force is expected from 2027 — with a transition window whose length nobody knows. Two years is the common hope. Nothing is announced. It may be shorter.
And the banks?
They escape the formal crypto authorisation — the banking licence sits atop the pyramid. But make no mistake: the material obligations follow the activity, not the licence. Custody standards, staking rules, conduct and AML requirements will apply to banks in full. No new licence to file — but a real compliance build to deliver. Adaptation is not optional.
What we do know is what happens inside a transition window.
Switzerland ran this experiment before: when FinIA arrived in 2020, portfolio managers got three full years to seek authorisation. Most waited. The result was a stampede at the deadline — regulators buried under last-minute files, review times stretching by months, firms flirting with the loss of their right to operate. Three years was not enough for those who waited.
This time, everyone remembers. The sophisticated players will file on day one — into a licensing desk that does not scale with demand. Queues form. Incomplete files sink.
The arithmetic nobody wants to hear:
Roughly 70% of a complete application can be built today — corporate and capital structure, governance, fit-and-proper files, risk and compliance apparatus, custody architecture, business plan. The final 30% — definitive capital figures, FINMA’s forms — is calibration, not construction. A prepared applicant adapts in weeks. An unprepared one starts from zero, in the queue, behind everyone.
One structural decision worth making early: two entities, not one.
The two licences sit at the same level — neither absorbs the other. And the lawmaker had the easy option of one broad “fintech 2.0” licence covering everything — and deliberately refused it: two distinct chapters, two distinct prudential regimes, engineered so one risk cannot contaminate the other.
Then there’s the test case that matters at 3 a.m. Your payment business runs perfectly — and your crypto arm gets hacked for a billion. In one entity, both die: the healthy business, its licence, its clients, all sunk by the other side’s liabilities. In two entities under a common holding, the crypto company fails alone and the payment company opens for business the next morning.
Structuring with two entities doesn’t work around the law. It mirrors it.
No promises — parameters may still move, and FINMA alone decides who gets licensed. Preparation doesn’t buy the licence. It buys the front of the queue.
The gate opens once. The question is who’s standing in front of it.
René-Philippe
FintechLex SA — Geneva | Hong Kong | London
insight@fintechlex.com
General reflections, not legal advice — every structure lives or dies on its specifics.
