Standing reference. Checked against FCA source material on 19 August 2026. The determination figures below are the FCA’s own, published as at 1 August 2026. The dates come from the FCA and from The Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Cryptoassets) Regulations 2026. This is journalism, not legal advice; a firm deciding whether it is in scope should take its own.
There is no single document called a UK crypto licence. There are two different permissions, they are granted under two different pieces of law, and for the next fourteen months both exist at once. Most of the confusion in this area comes from collapsing them into one thing.
The first is registration under the money laundering regulations — the MLRs. It is an anti-money-laundering gateway, it is what every UK cryptoasset exchange provider and custodian wallet provider needs today, and the FCA has run it since 10 January 2020.
The second is authorisation under FSMA. It is a full financial-services permission with conduct rules, prudential requirements and a senior-manager regime attached, and it takes effect on 25 October 2027. Applications open on 30 September 2026.
The point that catches firms out: MLR registration does not convert into FSMA authorisation. The FCA has said so directly — there will be no automatic conversion, and firms already on the register will have to apply again through the new gateway.
The dates that decide everything
| Date | What happens |
|---|---|
| 10 January 2020 | FCA becomes AML supervisor for UK cryptoasset businesses. The MLR register opens. |
| 4 February 2026 | The Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Cryptoassets) Regulations 2026 are made by Parliament, bringing cryptoassets inside the FCA’s regulatory remit. |
| 30 June 2026 | FCA publishes final rules and guidance — PS26/9 on admissions, disclosures and market abuse; PS26/11 on regulated cryptoasset activities; PS26/12 on prudential requirements; PS26/13 on cross-cutting Handbook requirements. |
| 30 September 2026 | The FSMA authorisation gateway opens. The application period begins. |
| 1 February 2027 | Regulation 34A of the amended MLRs takes effect: enhanced customer due diligence on correspondent relationships with third-country exchange and custodian providers. |
| 28 February 2027 | The application period closes. Firms can still apply after this date, but the FCA has said it will not expedite late applications to compensate. |
| 31 July 2027 | Practical cut-off for a new MLR registration application. The FCA’s determination deadline is three months from a complete application, so anything filed later is unlikely to be decided before the regime changes. |
| 25 October 2027 | The new regime commences. From this date, carrying on a regulated cryptoasset activity without FSMA permission risks breaching the general prohibition. |
Who needs FCA registration today
The requirement sits in Regulation 8L and Regulation 9 of the MLRs; Regulation 14A defines which services are caught. The FCA applies three tests, and a firm needs to fail none of them to stay outside the perimeter.
1. Is the activity in scope?
| Service | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Cryptoasset exchange provider | Exchanging cryptoassets for money or money for cryptoassets, exchanging one cryptoasset for another, or arranging or making arrangements with a view to either. Includes crypto ATMs, peer-to-peer providers, and firms issuing new cryptoassets through an ICO or IEO. |
| Custodian wallet provider | Safeguarding, or safeguarding and administering, cryptoassets on behalf of customers — or the private keys used to hold, store and transfer them. |
Firms already registered or authorised for something else — e-money institutions, payment institutions, existing FSMA-authorised firms — are not exempt. They still need MLR registration if they intend to provide in-scope cryptoasset services.
2. Is it carried on by way of business?
The FCA weighs whether the firm advertises or holds itself out as providing the service, whether it takes direct or indirect commercial benefit, how significant the crypto activity is next to the rest of the business, and how frequently it happens. None of these is decisive on its own.
3. Is it carried on in the UK?
A UK office or head office points towards yes. The presence of a crypto ATM in the UK is treated as business carried on in the UK, so the operator needs registration.
The FCA’s position on the reverse case is more permissive than most summaries suggest, and it is worth quoting the shape of it: where a business has no UK office and no other UK activity beyond having a client here, the FCA is likely to consider that it is not carrying on business in the UK. An exchange incorporated elsewhere, with no UK offices or agents, that nonetheless lets UK customers open accounts and trade, is not automatically inside the perimeter on that basis alone.
That does not mean an offshore exchange can market freely. The UK financial promotions regime applies to every firm marketing cryptoassets to UK consumers regardless of where the firm is based, and it is technology-agnostic — the format of the communication does not change the answer. A firm that wants to communicate its own crypto promotions to UK customers needs MLR registration, unless an authorised person approves the promotion or an exemption in the Financial Promotion Order applies. Two of the enforcement stories we have covered this month, the FCA’s settlement talks with HTX over promotion rules and Binance’s attempt to re-enter the UK market, turn on exactly this distinction.
What the FCA’s own numbers show
The FCA publishes its registration outcomes monthly. These are the figures as at 1 August 2026, covering every application since 10 January 2020.
| Outcome | Last month | Previous 12 months | Since January 2020 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Registered | 1 | 13 (56%) | 68 (17%) |
| Rejected | 1 | 2 (9%) | 46 (12%) |
| Withdrawn | 1 | 8 (35%) | 263 (67%) |
| Refused | 0 | 0 (0%) | 14 (4%) |
| Total determined | 3 | 23 | 391 |
Applications received over the same periods: 5 last month, 32 in the previous twelve months, 412 since January 2020. The FCA has also run a pre-application meeting service since January 2024 — 115 requests received, 82 meetings conducted, 19 requests rejected, as at the same date.
Four outcomes, and they are not interchangeable. Rejected means the application arrived without the minimum information required under Regulation 57 and never reached a substantive assessment. Refused means it was assessed and failed. Withdrawn is the applicant’s own decision, and it is by a wide margin the most common ending.
What these numbers do not say
The headline that writes itself here is that approvals have surged — 56% of recent determinations ended in registration against 17% across the full period. We would not report it that way, for four reasons.
- Determinations and applications are different cohorts. The 23 decisions in the past twelve months are not decisions on the 32 applications received in that window. A decision taken in July 2026 may belong to a filing from 2024.
- Twenty-three is a small denominator. Two or three cases moving between buckets changes the percentage by double digits.
- Attrition may have moved earlier in the process. The pre-application service did not exist before January 2024. Screening that now happens before a formal filing does not appear in this table at all.
- 68 is not the number of registered firms. It is the cumulative count of positive determinations since 2020. Firms have since surrendered registrations, been acquired, or left the market, and the FCA’s data does not net those out. For a current list, the Financial Services Register is the authority; this table is not.
Read carefully, the table supports one clear statement and not much more: two-thirds of everything ever filed was abandoned by the applicant before a decision. Whatever the gateway is doing, it is doing most of it before the FCA ever says no.
What changes on 25 October 2027
From that date, carrying on one of the new regulated cryptoasset activities requires FSMA authorisation with permission for those activities. Firms already authorised for something else need a variation of permission rather than a fresh application. What happens to a firm on the day depends entirely on when it applied.
| Situation | Position on 25 October 2027 |
|---|---|
| Applied between 30 September 2026 and 28 February 2027, still undetermined | The saving provision applies. The firm can carry on providing cryptoasset services until its application is finally determined, including while a refusal is before the Upper Tribunal. It must notify the FCA that it is relying on the provision. |
| Applied after the window closed, still undetermined | The firm enters the transitional provision by operation of law. It may only act to perform contracts entered into before it entered the provision — no new contracts with new customers, and no new contracts with existing ones. |
| Did not apply | No saving provision and no transitional provision. The firm must run off its UK cryptoasset business before commencement. Continuing to trade risks breaching the general prohibition under s.19 FSMA, or s.20 for a firm acting outside its existing permission. |
The gap between the first two rows is the whole reason the application window matters. Applying inside it buys the right to keep trading normally while the FCA works; applying outside it buys a wind-down with the lights still on.
What the final rules actually require
The 30 June 2026 policy statements run to hundreds of pages. The provisions most likely to change how an exchange operates in the UK are these.
- UK retail orders must execute on a UK-authorised execution venue. Where a firm executes, or receives and transmits for execution, an order for a UK retail or elective professional client, that order has to be executed on a UK-authorised venue. Where the firm is otherwise arranging deals, it must take all reasonable steps to ensure its arrangements only result in execution on one. The FCA widened this from its consultation draft specifically to close an arranging gap.
- Group liquidity is constrained. A firm executing retail orders as principal must not systematically or predominantly source liquidity from a qualifying cryptoasset trading platform operated by a group entity that is not itself authorised as a UK platform operator. The FCA describes this as a deterrent to regulatory arbitrage.
- Best execution has a concrete floor. Firms should check prices from at least three reliable UK-authorised execution venues where possible — though the FCA has clarified they need not execute on those venues, nor run mechanical trade-by-trade checks, provided overall arrangements are effective and supported by periodic post-trade analysis.
- Custody sits under CASS 17, with adjustments for cryptoasset safeguarding.
- The Consumer Duty, COBS, SM&CR, regulatory reporting and safeguarding all apply, through PS26/13, alongside guidance on the FCA’s approach to international cryptoasset firms.
- DeFi is in scope where there is an identifiable controlling entity. Separate guidance on how decentralisation will be assessed in practice is still to come.
- A UK presence is expected. An overseas platform operator may in defined circumstances combine a UK legal entity with UK authorisation of the overseas platform via a UK branch, where that enables access to global liquidity.
What is still unsettled
Four things are genuinely open, and a page that presented this regime as finished would be wrong.
- The authorisation application form is still being finalised. The FCA has published the question set on a best-endeavours basis and expects the structure to hold, but says wording may change.
- The FCA intends to consult in September 2026 on an optional deferral mechanism, likely extending by six months the time for UK platform operators to admit tokens already traded by retail investors with a compliant disclosure document. The FCA states this work is ongoing and subject to change.
- Guidance on assessing decentralisation for DeFi has been signalled but not published.
- The mechanism for notifying the FCA that a firm is relying on the saving provision will be set out later by direction.
Questions we get asked
Do I need an FCA licence to run a crypto exchange in the UK?
You need FCA registration under the MLRs to provide in-scope cryptoasset exchange or custody services in the UK today, and you will need FSMA authorisation once the new regime starts on 25 October 2027. Neither is called a licence, and the two are separate permissions with separate applications.
Does MLR registration automatically become FSMA authorisation?
No. The FCA has stated there will be no automatic conversion. Registered firms have to secure authorisation through the new gateway like everyone else. Firms already authorised under FSMA for other activities apply to vary their permissions instead.
How long does FCA cryptoasset registration take?
The statutory deadline is three months from the FCA receiving the application form, or from receiving any further information it asks for — which is why real elapsed times run much longer than three months, since the clock restarts each time the FCA comes back with questions. A Freedom of Information response reported by FTAdviser in September 2025 put the average time to approval at 311 days in 2023/24 and 158 days in 2024/25.
How many crypto firms are registered with the FCA?
The FCA has granted 68 registrations since January 2020, as at 1 August 2026. That is a cumulative count of positive determinations, not a count of firms currently registered — registrations are surrendered and cancelled over time. The Financial Services Register is the only authoritative source for who holds a live registration today.
Can an offshore exchange serve UK customers without registering?
On the FCA’s own guidance, a firm with no UK office or agents that merely allows UK customers to open accounts is not automatically treated as carrying on business in the UK for MLR purposes. Marketing is a different question: the financial promotions regime catches any firm promoting cryptoassets to UK consumers wherever it is based. And from October 2027 the execution-venue rules make serving UK retail clients from outside the UK perimeter considerably harder.
What does it cost to apply?
Fees are set by the FCA and change; check the current fee schedule before budgeting. One structural point is fixed: where a firm asks the FCA to treat its FSMA authorisation application as also containing the information for an MLR registration application, it pays a single fee — the higher of the registration fee and the authorisation fee, not both.
Should a new firm apply for MLR registration now, or wait for the FSMA gateway?
The FCA’s stated preference is that firms applying on or after 30 September 2026 focus on FSMA authorisation rather than registration, and that any firm still wanting registration after that date contact its pre-application support service to explain why. Registration remains the only route to trading in the UK before October 2027, so the answer turns on whether a firm needs to be live in the interim. Applying after 31 July 2027 is unlikely to be worth it at all.
What we have reported
This page is the standing record. The reporting that sits behind it:
- Binance Seeks FCA License in Bid to Return to UK Market
- UK Regulator FCA Reportedly in Settlement Talks With HTX Over Crypto Promotion Rules
- UK Users Stay Locked Out by Sanctions as HTX Closes In on FCA Settlement
- UK Lawmakers Push Banks to Ease Crypto Firms’ Access Ahead of FCA Regime
- Coinbase Secures Full UK Trading License, Rolls Out Tokenized US Stocks
- UK Regulator FCA Reportedly Plans Rules for Tokenized Gold
- Robinhood Expands Crypto Trading to UK, Adding XRP, SHIB and Dozens More Tokens
Continuing coverage sits in Regulation, and exchange-specific reporting in Exchanges.
Sources
- FCA, Cryptoassets: Who needs to register — scope tests and the determination data, updated 5 August 2026.
- FCA, Cryptoassets: How the gateway will operate — application period, saving and transitional provisions.
- FCA, Registration under the MLRs ahead of the new FSMA regime — the 30 September 2026 and 31 July 2027 cut-offs, and the single-fee point.
- FCA, PS26/11: Regulated Cryptoasset Activities — execution venue, best execution, group liquidity, DeFi.
- The Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Amendment) Regulations 2026 — Regulation 34A, in force 1 February 2027.
How this page is maintained
The FCA updates its determination table monthly, usually in the first week. We re-check this page against that table and against the FCA’s new-regime pages on the same cadence, and we date the check at the top rather than asking you to trust that it is current. Where a figure here disagrees with the FCA, the FCA is right and we are stale — tell us at contact and we will fix it.