What an FSP licence actually costs in South Africa

A vocabulary note first. In South Africa, a CASP - a crypto asset service provider - is an FSP licensed under the FAIS Act and supervised by the FSCA, following the 2022 declaration of crypto assets as a financial product. It is not an EU MiCA authorisation, and neither regime passports into the other. The anatomy below is the FAIS anatomy, and it applies to every FSP category, crypto-permissioned or not.

The operative fee schedule is the FSCA's General Notice 1 of 2024, the Determination of Fees published on 27 September 2024 and effective 1 October 2024. It prices an application for authorisation as a Category II FSP at R16,313. Applying for several categories simultaneously earns a 10% discount on the combined fee, and a Category IV application by a firm already licensed for other products carries a 20% discount.

The same notice tables the other categories' application amounts and the key individual approval fees. We quote only the figure we have verified against the notice text; for the rest, pull the current table from GN 1 of 2024 - commercial sites circulate inconsistent numbers.

One category clarification. Category II is the discretionary licence: intermediary services rendered under mandate, the licence of portfolio managers, wealth managers and forex or CFD account managers trading client accounts. Advice sits in Category I. Guides describing Category II as an investment-advice licence are describing the wrong category.

Commercial licensing sites claim the FSCA levy is calculated on the firm's revenue. The gazette says otherwise. Schedule 2 of the Financial Sector and Deposit Insurance Levies Act, as substituted by GN 6889 in GG 53742 of 28 November 2025, defines variable B as the total value of investments managed or administered on behalf of clients - assets under management, measured at 31 August, not turnover. The levy therefore scales with the book you run, up to the R2,766,600 cap; a firm with no managed assets pays base plus per-head.

Two further lines belong in the same budget: a separate FAIS Ombud levy under Schedule 3 of the same gazette, and the annual re-set itself - the next levy adjustment is expected around November 2026.

Search results promise minimum capital figures. The honest position: there is no fixed minimum share capital in rand for a Category I or II FSP - true and misleading at once, because Chapter 6 of Board Notice 194 of 2017, Table B, imposes real, continuously monitored financial soundness instead.

For a Category II FSP the tests are three: assets must exceed liabilities, with goodwill, intangibles and related-party loans stripped out of the asset side; current assets must exceed current liabilities; and liquid assets must cover at least 8/52 weeks of annual expenditure, computed from the last financial statements or, for a start-up, from budgeted figures. A Category I FSP holding client assets carries the same structure at 4/52. Only Categories IIA and III have a rand figure attached: assets must exceed liabilities by at least R3 million, with liquidity at 13/52. A firm holding multiple categories on one licence meets the most onerous of the applicable requirements.

The maintenance cost is where budgets slip. Category II firms file Form A financial returns half-yearly, within 45 days of each half-year end. And the early-warning regime has teeth: fall within 10% of the required buffers and the FSP must notify the FSCA immediately - after which it may not pay dividends, make distributions or extend loans without prior written FSCA approval. For a buyer planning to extract cash from a newly acquired FSP, that gate is a real deal-structuring constraint.

The cover floors live in Board Notice 123 of 2009, and the deadline is unforgiving: a newly licensed FSP must have cover in place within six weeks of authorisation. For a Category II FSP that does not hold client funds or products, the minimum is R1 million in guarantees or professional indemnity cover; holding client funds or products lifts it to R5 million in guarantees, or R5 million each in professional indemnity and fidelity cover. Categories IIA and III sit at R5 million, Categories I and IV at R1 million. The notice sets floors for the sum insured, not premiums - those are market-priced.

An FSP is an accountable institution under Schedule 1 item 12 of the FIC Act: registration with the Financial Intelligence Centre, a risk management and compliance programme, and reporting duties. None of that carries a licence fee - the cost is operational, including the compliance officer: an FSP with more than one key individual or any representatives must appoint one, FSCA-approved under section 17 of the FAIS Act.

The fit-and-proper framework adds people costs no fee schedule captures: the RE1 regulatory examination for key individuals, RE3 additionally for Category II, recognised qualifications, class-of-business training and annual CPD hours. These costs decide whether an application succeeds at all, and they recur with every key individual you add.

No statute sets a decision deadline for an FSP application. The FSCA has published Service Level Commitments, dated 26 March 2024, which describe 60 working days for a new Category I or II authorisation on a complete, error-free application, and treat an information request unanswered within 30 calendar days as forfeiting the application - but these are published commitments, not binding deadlines. Consultancy ranges of "8-12 weeks" or "4-8 months" circulate with no official basis; treat them as marketing.

Nor is there an official price for an existing licensed company. Dollar ranges for "FSP licences for sale" circulate on listing sites; they are broker folklore, not verifiable market data, and we do not repeat them as fact. SKY7 prices its lots on request, against the specific company.

What a buyer should price instead is the acquisition mechanics. South Africa has no regulator approval of the share sale itself - the FSR Act's significant-owner approval regime does not reach FAIS FSPs - but the gates sit on people: the incoming key individual must be FSCA-approved before taking part in the management or oversight of the business, the compliance officer needs approval, new directors are notified within 15 days, significant owners face honesty-and-integrity requirements with a 30-day notification, and a licence whose business has gone dormant lapses. Key individual approval is an assessment, not a formality, and nobody can promise its outcome. The mechanics are in our guide to key individual approval in an FSP acquisition; the live inventory is a Category II discretionary FSP and a dual Category I and II CASP, both priced on request.