How MiCA turned regulatory compliance into a competitive advantage

The MiCA transitional grace period has ended. Any provider operating outside of the MiCA framework must now stop serving European customers.

While that sounds harsh, it is the best thing the EBA and ESMA could have done. 

However, it does not come as a surprise. The Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation was established in 2023 to govern European cryptocurrency activities. It required companies to obtain a Crypto-Asset Service Provider (CASP) licence to operate across all EU member states – a single licence that grants the right to serve clients across all 27 member states without re-licensing in each one. For providers still operating without a licence, fines of up to €15 million or 12.5% of annual turnover now apply.

The numbers speak for themselves. Of the 3,000-plus firms that held pre-MiCA national registrations, only around 194 are fully authorised. Hogan Lovells estimated that 75% of Europe's pre-MiCA crypto firms were expected to lose or hand back their registration. Only 210 of 1,200-plus pre-MiCA registrations converted to full CASP licences – a conversion rate of just 17%, according to Crypto.news. The rest have had to stop serving European customers.

The writing was on the wall

For those following this closely, the practical deadline passed months ago. The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has warned national regulators to apply heightened scrutiny to last-minute applications. The AMF in France also publicly warned providers that applications are rarely successfully completed on first submission and that review periods of four months or more are typical once a file is accepted. For firms without applications already in progress, processing timelines of six to twelve months meant the window had quietly closed well before 1 July.

The obvious read is that fewer competitors is bad for the market. I think the opposite is true.

What MiCA has done is separate providers that saw compliance as an enabler and business advantage from those that did not. For businesses using stablecoin payments, the immediate question is a simple one: is your payment provider fully authorised? If not, move. Staying with an unlicensed provider means exposed contracts, payments that may not settle, and processes built on infrastructure that could stop running at any point.

The case for stablecoins just got stronger

This is also a signal about where stablecoins are heading. Adoption is accelerating fast. Global stablecoin payment volumes roughly doubled to around $400 billion in 2025, with around 60% coming from B2B payments, according to Stripe's 2026 annual letter. Paybis has reported that around one in four businesses already use stablecoins for international payments or plan to within a year. Tier-one banks - such as J.P. Morgan and Société Générale - are already piloting stablecoin networks. Regulation like MiCA is what gives businesses confidence that the partners handling their money are stable, secure, and here to stay. That is the foundation for adoption at scale.

Regulatory quality is now a competitive advantage

What comes next is a smaller, cleaner market. Compliance teams will start asking harder questions of their payment partners: who authorised you, where, and what does your licence actually cover. Those answers now carry real weight.

Not all MiCA licences are equal either. Some jurisdictions, such as Ireland and Germany, ended their transitional periods early and applied stricter authorisation processes than the EU minimum. Getting licensed in those jurisdictions meant meeting the highest bar in the EU, and that distinction matters to enterprise clients evaluating payment infrastructure.

At Confirmo, we chose to be authorised by the Central Bank of Ireland because it is one of Europe's most rigorous regulators, and meeting that standard has given our clients confidence we will still be operating, and serving them, well beyond the deadline. We hold dual authorisation – a CASP licence under MiCA, granted by the CBI in December 2025, and a Payment Institution licence under the Payment Services Regulations 2018 – which means we can provide crypto-asset services and execute stablecoin payment transactions within a single, fully regulated environment, across all 30 EEA states. Few providers can say the same.

With more than 12 years of experience building crypto payments infrastructure, we have watched businesses increasingly turn to stablecoins for faster, more transparent and more efficient cross-border payments. The US is heading in the same direction – the GENIUS Act signals that regulation and innovation are not in tension. The framework is what gives businesses the confidence to adopt stablecoins at scale.

The MiCA deadline did not close the door on crypto payments in Europe. For the providers that did the work, it opened it wider.

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