Overview
Seychelles introduced a virtual-asset service provider regime and has been a common home for exchanges seeking a low-cost licence.
The honest assessment
A Seychelles licence is inexpensive and comparatively quick. It is also, in many counterparties' eyes, a signal rather than a credential. Banks, payment providers, institutional counterparties and acquirers increasingly discount it.
That does not make it useless. It makes it a licence that should be chosen deliberately, for a business whose counterparties do not care, rather than defaulted into because it is the cheapest line in a comparison table.
Where it goes wrong
Firms obtain a Seychelles licence, market globally on the strength of it, and discover that it authorises far less than they assumed and is recognised nowhere else. The licence is not the problem; the assumption is.
How it fits with the UAE
Rarely as a complement. If the business needs UAE market access it needs a UAE permission. A Seychelles licence does not reduce that requirement.
How we help
We advise on market access before a sales team is pointed at a country, document the basis on which clients in each market are accepted or refused, and build the controls that make that basis hold. Where a second licence is genuinely needed, we run it.
Preguntas frecuentes
Is a Seychelles licence enough to run a global exchange?
It authorises what its own law authorises, in its own jurisdiction. It does not authorise serving users in jurisdictions that regulate the activity themselves — which now includes most of the markets worth serving.
Fuentes
- Financial Services Authority (FSA) — current framework and guidance — Position to be confirmed against the regulator's own publications before reliance