Digital currency payment firm ZBD has announced it has become the first company to receive approval from the European Union (EU) to become a crypto asset service provider (CASP) under the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation.
The Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) has approved ZBD’s licence application under MiCA, and will issue its licence when the EU crypto regulation takes effect on 30 December 2024.
MiCA is the landmark European regulatory framework that all CASPs in the EU must comply with. Securing a licence under MiCA enables ZBD to expand its capabilities by offering a wide range of services including crypto asset custody, administration, transfers, and fiat-to-crypto and crypto-to-fiat exchange.
Marca Wosoba, COO of ZBD, commented: “Being the first to have received MiCAR license approval is a major leap forward for us.
“We’ve built a culture where compliance is at the forefront of what we do, and we see it as an enabler for new functionality, not a blocker. MiCAR gave us an opportunity to obtain licensing across all of the EU and facilitate our expansion in the region.”
ZBD has stated it has positioned its compliance procedures to align with MiCA’s guidelines, which has been labelled stringent by various crypto companies as the EU looks to foster a secure environment for these companies to operate in.
The firm has a strong focus on delivering a digital-native payments infrastructure for the gaming and entertainment industries. Unlike traditional fintech companies, which typically start with a fiat-first model and then add-on crypto functionality, ZBD enables fast, low-cost, and globally scalable payments.
This flexibility allows the company to find product market-fit in the gaming space, serving use cases that are incompatible with traditional finance, such as instant reward payouts with no minimums.
“Having already built a stable revenue-generating business gives us a great entry point to expand what we do and move towards our vision of building a payments company that can instantly move money in any currency,” added Wosoba.
“It’s not about being a crypto or Bitcoin business, it’s about being a digital-native payments business that happens to use Bitcoin on the Lightning Network as a core technology in our internal tech stack.”
