SA-CASP is not MiCA-CASP: what a South African crypto licence is

South Africa never wrote a bespoke crypto statute. Instead the FSCA reached for an Act already on the books: the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act 37 of 2002, whose section 7(1) prohibits rendering financial services without an FSP licence. General Notice 1350 of 2022, published in Government Gazette 47334 on 19 October 2022, declared a crypto asset a financial product under that Act - and from that moment crypto advice, intermediary services and discretionary portfolio management needed the same species of licence a securities adviser holds. The FSCA is explicit about the boundary: it licenses crypto asset service providers only insofar as they render advice, intermediary or investment management services in crypto assets. Crypto is not legal tender in South Africa, and the Reserve Bank does not recognise it as currency.

The EU took the opposite route: a purpose-built regulation that replaced national VASP registrations with a single authorisation covering a defined list of crypto services, fixed own-funds floors and a passport across the EEA. We will not re-tell that framework here - the MiCA guide linked above covers it end to end. What matters is the gap: the two licences are not variants of one standard, but different instruments from different legal families, with different economics.

The declaration defines its own perimeter. A crypto asset, in the FSCA's wording, is a digital representation of value not issued by a central bank, capable of being traded, transferred or stored electronically for payment, investment or other utility, applying cryptographic techniques and using distributed ledger technology. Anyone advising on, intermediating in or managing such assets as a regular feature of business falls inside FAIS.

The perimeter has deliberate holes. Crypto asset miners, node operators and persons rendering financial services only in relation to non-fungible tokens were exempted. Crypto derivatives were never covered by the declaration, because they were already FAIS-regulated as derivatives. And the transition was managed rather than abrupt: FAIS Notice 90 of 2022 allowed incumbent providers who applied for a licence between 1 June and 30 November 2023 to keep operating until their application was approved or declined.

The FAIS licence is also only half the stack. A South African CASP has been an accountable institution under Schedule 1 item 22 of the FIC Act since 19 December 2022: FIC registration, a risk management and compliance programme and, since 30 April 2025, the Directive 9 travel rule on crypto asset transfers.

Board Notice 194 of 2017 sorts FSPs into five categories; for crypto, two matter. Category I covers advice and non-discretionary intermediary services: advising clients on crypto assets, executing their orders, arranging deals on their instruction. Category II is the discretionary FSP - rendering intermediary services under a discretionary mandate, which is what a crypto portfolio or wealth manager does when it decides trades on the client's behalf.

One error circulating in search results is worth killing here: Category II is not the investment advice licence. Advice sits in Category I. Category II authorises discretionary intermediary services under mandate - and the distinction decides which licence a model needs, what experience its key individuals must show, and which soundness rules apply.

The dual structure combines both: one FSP authorised in Category I and Category II with crypto assets as an approved product - advice, execution and discretionary management under a single licence. Under Board Notice 194 section 50, a multi-category FSP complies with the most onerous financial soundness requirement that applies to it, so a dual crypto FSP runs on Category II's numbers. SKY7's live dual Category I and II crypto licence lot is exactly this structure. One honesty note for buyers: the FSCA does not approve the share sale itself, but incoming key individuals must be approved before they may manage or oversee the business - and no adviser can guarantee that approval.

Ask what minimum capital an SA CASP needs and the technically correct answer is: none. Neither Category I nor Category II carries a fixed minimum share capital in rand. Stated alone, that answer misleads.

Board Notice 194's Table B replaces a capital floor with a maintenance test. An FSP's assets must exceed its liabilities, excluding goodwill, intangibles and loans to related parties; current assets must exceed current liabilities; and liquid assets must cover a slice of annual expenditure - 4/52 for Category I, 8/52 for Category II, and 13/52 plus assets exceeding liabilities by at least R3 million only for Categories IIA and III. A Category II crypto FSP therefore holds roughly eight weeks of its own annual expenditure in liquid form, every day, scaled to its cost base rather than fixed at licensing.

The regime polices the buffer, too. Under section 49 of the Board Notice, an FSP whose numbers fall below 110% of the requirement must notify the FSCA immediately - and may not pay dividends or make loans or distributions without prior FSCA approval while the trigger stands. Contrast the MiCA philosophy of fixed euro own-funds floors by service class, EUR 50,000 to EUR 150,000 plus a fixed-overheads test, as our MiCA guide sets out: South Africa prices the licence in ongoing liquidity discipline, the EU in paid-up capital.

A FAIS licence authorises financial services in and into South Africa. It confers no rights in any EU member state: no notification procedure, no equivalence decision, no recognition route by which an SA CASP can serve EEA clients on its South African licence. A MiCA authorisation is worth exactly as much in the other direction - nothing. The reverse traffic is policed: under the FIC-FSCA joint advisory of 17 April 2025, a foreign CASP advising clients resident in South Africa must itself be FSCA-licensed and FIC-registered, with no exemptions from the FIC Act obligations. A crypto business that wants both markets needs both licences; there is no shortcut through either acronym.

The South African route runs through a regulator that declines and stalls weak files. As at 31 March 2026, the FSCA reported 533 CASP licence applications processed, 310 approved, 17 declined and 124 withdrawn - the last figure largely files that died on information requests. Its published decline reasons: operational ability (no crypto-specific business model) and competence (no demonstrable crypto experience). The FSCA's service level commitments of 26 March 2024 target 60 working days for a complete, error-free Category I or II application - a published, non-binding commitment, not a statutory deadline, and the FSCA's own statistics show weak files taking far longer. These figures are a dated snapshot; verify them against the FSCA's next CASP update.

One date matters more than any other for anyone staffing or acquiring an SA CASP. Licensed CASPs and their key individuals were exempted from the FAIS regulatory examinations for a transition period; that exemption expired on 30 June 2025 after a single extension, and the FSCA has stated there will be no further extensions. A key individual without the RE1 examination - plus RE3 for Category II - now exposes the licence itself to suspension or withdrawal under section 9 of the FAIS Act.

For foreign operators the point is sharper still: incoming key individuals must sit the South African regulatory examinations, and a track record under another regulator does not substitute for them. Treat an exam-qualified key individual as a precondition, not a post-completion task.