What Article 6 actually grants
Accepting public deposits on a professional basis is what triggers the Swiss banking-licence requirement, and the Banking Ordinance sets the professional bar low: more than 20 public deposits, or public solicitation. Most payment apps, wallets and marketplace floats cross it in their first weeks.
The sandbox, in force since 1 August 2017, switches that trigger off. Meet its three conditions and the activity is deemed non-professional even with hundreds of depositors and public marketing. That is the real purchase: CHF 1 million is less a business ceiling than the price of testing a deposit-holding model in the live market, with no application to file and no approval to wait for. Since 1 August 2021 the cap also counts collectively custodied crypto-based assets.
The three conditions, exactly as the ordinance sets them
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The total stays at or below CHF 1 million
Public deposits and collectively custodied crypto-based assets combined. The cap is measured against everything held, and breaching it starts the clocks in Article 6 paragraph 4 - see below.
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No interest-margin business
What disqualifies you is the classic banking spread - taking deposits and lending them on at interest (Zinsdifferenzgeschäft). Investing the funds, by contrast, has been permitted since 1 April 2019.
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Depositors are warned in text form
Clients must be told, in text form, that the business is not supervised by FINMA and that deposits are not covered by deposit insurance. The disclosure is a condition of the exemption, not a courtesy.
You may invest the money - the licence above you may not
The most misquoted point in the sandbox rules is investment. Since the ordinance revision of 30 November 2018, in force on 1 April 2019, sandbox deposits may be invested; the only barred model is interest-margin business. Check the date on any guide that says otherwise.
Note the inversion one rung up. An Article 1b fintech licensee may neither invest the deposits it holds nor pay interest on them - the business must earn fees, not margin. On this single point the sandbox is more permissive than the licence above it, which is one reason a model can make sense as a CHF 1 million experiment even where the CHF 100 million version would not.
The trap most guides miss: AMLA still applies
Article 6 switches off one trigger in one statute: professional deposit-taking under the Banking Act. It does nothing to the Anti-Money Laundering Act. A sandbox business running a payments model is a financial intermediary under Article 2 paragraph 3 AMLA and must join a self-regulatory organisation under Article 14 paragraph 1 AMLA - FINMA recognises eleven SROs as of July 2026. The sandbox gives no AML relief whatsoever.
Two precision points, because Swiss supervision vocabulary gets mangled abroad. First, SRO affiliation is not a FINMA licence: it provides AML supervision only, and it never permits professional public deposit-taking - that always needs Article 1a or 1b of the Banking Act. Second, SROs are not SOs: the eleven recognised SROs supervise AMLA intermediaries, while the four authorised supervisory organisations oversee portfolio managers and trustees that already hold a FINMA licence under the Financial Institutions Act - a different population entirely. If your model lands on the SRO rung, our comparison of SO-FIT, VQF and ARIF shows how to choose between them.
Break the cap and two clocks start
Cross CHF 1 million and Article 6 paragraph 4 gives you 10 days to notify FINMA and 30 days to file a licence application; FINMA can bar further deposit-taking while the application is pending. The pattern repeats one rung up: an Article 1b licensee that crosses CHF 100 million has 10 days to notify and 90 days to file for a full banking licence. Swiss law does not build soft landings; it builds deadlines.
The discipline bites because the sandbox is self-executing. There is no approval letter to point to, so a business that drifts outside the conditions - the cap, the no-margin rule, the disclosure - is simply an unlicensed deposit-taker, and operating without a required licence is a criminal offence under Article 44 of the Financial Market Supervision Act. Treat the three conditions as a live compliance obligation: the moment the cap breaks, the 10-day clock is already running.
Where the ladder goes next
The sandbox proves a model; it does not scale one. Swiss law then offers a ladder, and each rung is a different instrument with a different supervisor.
Imported vocabulary muddies this market, so two corrections before the map. A Swiss "crypto licence" does not exist: the real instrument for exchange, brokerage and custodial-wallet models is SRO affiliation under AMLA, covered in our Swiss crypto route overview. And Switzerland has no EMI or e-money licence category: the honest equivalents today are the sandbox, an SRO construction or the Article 1b licence, depending on what the model does with client money.
The Swiss ladder, rung by rung
| Rung | Legal basis | Who supervises | What it permits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rung Sandbox | Legal basis Art. 6 paras 2-4 Banking Ordinance | Who supervises No prudential supervisor - that is the point. AMLA still applies | What it permits Up to CHF 1m in public deposits or collectively custodied crypto; more than 20 depositors and public solicitation allowed; no interest-margin business |
| Rung SRO affiliation | Legal basis Art. 14 AMLA | Who supervises One of 11 FINMA-recognised SROs (AML only), as of July 2026 | What it permits AML cover for para-banking - payments, exchange, custody as an intermediary. Never permits professional public deposit-taking |
| Rung SO supervision | Legal basis FinIA and Art. 43a FINMASA | Who supervises One of 4 authorised supervisory organisations | What it permits Ongoing supervision of FINMA-licensed portfolio managers and trustees - not a deposit-taking rung at all |
| Rung Fintech licence | Legal basis Art. 1b Banking Act | Who supervises FINMA directly - prudential-lite plus AML | What it permits Public deposits or designated crypto up to CHF 100m; no investing the funds, no interest paid |
| Rung Full bank | Legal basis Art. 1a Banking Act | Who supervises FINMA - full prudential and AML supervision | What it permits Deposit-taking with interest-margin business; the only rung whose clients get the depositor privilege of up to CHF 100,000 per creditor |
Reading the rungs honestly: the fintech licence is a niche instrument - FINMA's public register lists exactly five licensees as of July 2026 - with minimum capital of 3 per cent of deposits and a CHF 300,000 floor, against CHF 10 million for a full bank. And no rung of this ladder carries EU or EEA market access. The same border that keeps the Swiss perimeter lighter and MiCA inapplicable also means no MiCA or e-money passporting: EU-facing distribution needs an EU-licensed entity or a state-by-state third-country analysis.
Where a model fits the AML-affiliation rung, acquiring can beat building - SKY7's live Swiss inventory sits on that rung as SRO-affiliated companies - while the upper rungs are advisory and application work. Whether to start in the sandbox or go straight to affiliation, and when an Article 1b file should begin, is exactly what a scoping call settles.
- CHF 1m
- the sandbox cap on public deposits and collectively custodied crypto
- 20
- public deposits before deposit-taking counts as professional
- 10/30
- days to notify FINMA and file an application once the cap breaks
- 5
- Article 1b fintech licensees on FINMA's register, July 2026
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
01 Is the Swiss sandbox a licence or a registration?
Neither. It is an exemption in Article 6 of the Banking Ordinance that deems deposit-taking non-professional while the conditions hold. Nothing is filed, granted or registered, nobody supervises the business prudentially, and clients must be told in text form that FINMA does not supervise it and that deposits carry no deposit insurance.
02 Can a sandbox business invest the deposits it holds?
Yes, since 1 April 2019. The condition is the absence of interest-margin business, not idle funds. The contrast one rung up is sharp: an Article 1b fintech licensee may neither invest its deposits nor pay interest on them.
03 Does anti-money-laundering law apply inside the sandbox?
In full. Article 6 only switches off the banking-licence trigger. A payments model is a financial intermediary under Article 2 paragraph 3 AMLA and must join a FINMA-recognised SRO under Article 14 paragraph 1 AMLA - the sandbox provides no AML relief at all.
04 What happens if we exceed CHF 1 million?
Two deadlines start: notify FINMA within 10 days and file a licence application within 30 days. FINMA can bar further deposit-taking while the application is pending, and operating without a required licence is a criminal offence under Article 44 FINMASA - so the cap needs live monitoring.
05 Will the FinIA revision change the sandbox?
The consultation the Federal Council opened on 22 October 2025 targets the rungs above it: replacing the Article 1b fintech licence with a payment-instrument-institution category without the CHF 100 million cap, plus a new crypto-institution licence. It closed on 6 February 2026; as of July 2026 the dispatch to Parliament is pending and both Article 1b and Article 6 remain in force as written. Verify the current state on sif.admin.ch and fedlex.admin.ch before structuring around either regime.
Keep reading
Related reading
The Swiss fintech licence: the full route
The Article 1b guide - the CHF 100 million ceiling, capital, process, and the reform that may replace it.
Switzerland: jurisdiction overview
The supervision tiers, the regulators and the routes SKY7 runs in Switzerland, in one place.
SO-FIT, VQF or ARIF: choosing a Swiss SRO
If the AMLA rung is where your model lands, this is how the SRO options compare in practice.