At its December meeting, South Africa’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) will address 36 of the 128 applications it has received from crypto service asset providers (CASPs). The following dates are on the calendar for the FSCA’s application review: December 12 (36 licensees), February 13 (22 more), and March 12 (14 more).
Nobody knows what happened to the applications that weren’t covered at these meetings. Know Your Customer (KYC) onboarding, data protection, cyber risk management, complaints handling, conflict of interest management, and credit counterparty risk management are some of the factors used by the FSCA to evaluate applications.
![South Africa set to License 36 Crypto companies in December image 13](https://i0.wp.com/nosisnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/image-13.png?resize=794%2C810&ssl=1)
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The FSCA also released its “Crypto Assets Markets Study” for 2023 on November 30th, in addition to the application review. In South Africa, the majority of cryptocurrency holdings (60%) are classified as “unbacked crypto assets,” with the exception of stablecoins (26%) and nonfungible tokens (4% market share), as well as certain coins issued by the central bank.
One other finding from the report is that 46% of South African crypto asset providers had yearly revenues between 1 and 50 million South African rand, or around $53,000 and $2.7 million. Revenues above 100 million rand ($5.4 million) are reported by just 8% of CASPs.
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November 2022 was the most valuable month for cryptocurrency transactions in South Africa, reaching over 8 billion rand, or around $427 million. The FSCA issued a warning in July 2023, mandating that all CASPs operating in the country must obtain a license by the year’s end.
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Those businesses who do not have the proper licensing may face fines or perhaps shutdown as a result of the regulator’s enforcement actions.
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