🇨🇭 Crypto licence in Switzerland

The regime

Switzerland regulates crypto by activity rather than with a single crypto licence: banking or fintech licences for deposit-taking, securities-firm licences and the DLT trading facility licence for venues (under the DLT Act, fully in force August 2021), and self-regulatory organisation (SRO) membership for pure AML coverage.

Zug ("Crypto Valley") and Zurich remain dense hubs of licensed crypto institutions, including two fully licensed crypto banks. Switzerland sits outside the EU, so MiCA neither applies nor passports — a Swiss licence is Swiss-only.

Requirements

• Deposit-taking / custody at scale: a banking licence or the lighter fintech licence (public deposits up to CHF 100M, no interest paid on them).
• Trading venues: a DLT trading facility licence under the DLT Act for multilateral trading of DLT securities, or a securities-firm licence.
• AML-only business (brokerage, exchange without custody of client funds at bank scale): membership of a FINMA-supervised SRO under the Anti-Money Laundering Act.
• Token classification: FINMA's payment / utility / asset token taxonomy (2018 ICO guidance) decides which securities rules attach.

Licensed firms

FINMA-licensed crypto institutions include:

• AMINA Bank (ex-SEBA) — fully licensed Swiss crypto bank, Zug
• Sygnum — fully licensed Swiss crypto bank, Zurich
• Bitcoin Suisse — SRO-supervised crypto financial services, Zug

Snapshot, not the register: verify current status against FINMA authorisation lists before relying on it.

Does Switzerland have one single crypto licence?

No — it licenses the activity, not the asset class. A custody exchange, a DLT trading venue and a pure broker need different permissions, from a banking licence down to SRO membership.

Does MiCA apply in Switzerland?

No. Switzerland is outside the EU; MiCA neither applies nor passports. Swiss firms serving EU customers need EU authorisation and vice versa.