Canada Money Services Businesses (MSB) An Excellent Alternative to European EMI-license

To start working in the fintech sector, a company must not only register but also obtain the relevant authorization. Such a document will allow it to carry out certain functions and furnish assistance to other companies. Many people are energetically trying to obtain an EMI license in EU-countries.

However, such a document can be obtained not very quickly. Many people have only 4 months to collect the essential documents for the apps and wait for a response from scrupulous regulator. As a result, it can take a year and a half from the moment of the idea to the start of its realization, and this market is not always ready to wait for new players for such a long period.

Therefore, many people began to look for ways to register and obtain permits across the ocean. The Canadian`s MSB-permit is assessed as the optimal alternative for this license. But this option is not so popular yet due to a lack of knowledge on the part of potential co-founders for such a business. They need to understand what functionality can be performed with this license and how to obtain it, and then they will be able to decide on registering a legal entity in Canada. Let’s try to understand these questions.

Why do you need an MSB-license in Canada?

This is not even a permission, but a special permit that can be obtained by legal entities or individual entrepreneurs who have been registered as payment service providers. This procedure is carried out by representatives of the Canadian-regulator.

At the same time, they set prerequisites that the corps are obliged to fulfill. Otherwise, their authorization may be revoked. First of all, it concerns compliance with Canadian-legislation regarding money-laundering or financing of terrorist-organizations. It is necessary to obtain this license for companies that:

• conduct exchanges using foreign currencies;
• provide money-transfer or money-transmission-services;
• issue or redeem money orders, traveler’s cheques, and other similar appliances;
• work with virtual currencies;
• provide crowdfunding assistance.

These companies are committed to maintaining an office in Canada and employing staff in the local community, including employees in management positions. At the same time, business co-owners with a 20% stake or more must not have any violations of international laws regarding financial activities and financing of illegal entities.

Benefits of working through MSB license

This license in comparison with its European counterpart has quite good advantages. First of all, it concerns the real timeframe for starting work and the review of the application by the regulatory authorities. In Canada, this approach can take up to three months. In any EU-country, a similar approach takes a year, and in some cases a year and a half. Accordingly, with a Canadian license, you will start working faster.

In addition, in Europe, there are prerequisites for the minimum number of hired workers among the local population and overestimated prerequisites for the authorized corps funds. In Canada, one resident in a management position (particularly as a compliance-officer) is sufficient.

Also, holders of a Canadian license will be able to work with cryptocurrency forms. In Europe, a separate type of license must be issued for this activity, which is very costly both in time and finances.

Of course, the EU-license allows it to operate in several countries at the same time and so far the Canadian counterpart cannot offer this. However, this shows that Canadian-legislation can still be transformed and provide users with appropriate tools for work and perhaps in the future, such variations will also be available for companies with Canadian MSB-licenses.

Corporation enrollment procedure for acquiring MSB-license

In total, the procedure for acquiring a permission can be divided into 3 main stages. In the first stage, the company prepares docs for enrollment and submits them to the representatives of the regulator. In particular, they need to be provided with:

• data on bank accounts;
• data on compliance officers;
• data on the staff of the company;
• info on the corps and co-founders;
• the company’s projected annual turnover in Canadian dollars for each planned service to be provided;
• data on branches and agents.

It takes up to 2 months to prepare the document from the moment of enrollment. After that, the second stage begins, namely the contemplation of the apps. This approach also takes 2 months, but sometimes they can check all the documents in a month (if there are no errors in the documents and adherence to all the rules and Canadians lawmaking).

If everything is in order, the corporation can launch its payment-infrastructure. To do this, you need to have correspondent-accounts with the banking institution. These accounts should be in popular currencies and through these accounts it will be possible to transfer funds. The more thoughtfully the company develops obedience procedures, the lower the company’s risk-rating will be and the more usefulness it will be able to provide.

For international-transfers that are not available from banking institutions, the company may contract with local or foreign transfer-providers. If the company wants to launch card programs, it should contract with the appropriate card-issuers.

To ensure SEPA-payments, the company needs to connect to other service providers. If they plan to work through SWIFT-transfers, they can enter into agreements with banking institutions . To work in the cryptocurrency market, it is necessary to integrate with crypto exchanges. However, it is possible to store customers’ cryptocurrency in their accounts after enlisting with the SRC. This is a more intricate approach than acquiring an MSB-license.

Who can help with the application process

Canadian regulators are less scrupulous than European regulators, but that doesn’t mean that the enrollment approach will be easy and painless. The corporation needs to submit a considerable package of documents. Also, representatives of the regulatory-authorities may request supplementary info or supporting documents. And this is not only a lot of problems, but also time costs and loss of income.

That’s why you should seek help from our experts. Each of our employees has worked with Canadian regulatory-authorities many times and knows the specifics of their requirements. We will help you to prepare such a package of docs, with which you will receive a permit to operate in the shortest possible time and will work faster than any of your competitors. For consultation, please contact our specialists in any convenient way.