Paysafe, the UK online payments firm, has been approved by the Central Bank of Ireland to carry out cryptocurrency trading services.
he company was approved as a virtual asset service provider, or VASP, by the central bank. The licence, which is one of the newer designations by the regulator, allows the company to offer trading and exchange services for cryptocurrencies.
Paysafe operates two payments products called Skrill and Neteller that the company will be adding virtual asset trading to, a spokeswoman said.
This will include the exchange between virtual assets and fiat currencies and the exchange between one or more forms of virtual assets.
“Paysafe has over 50 colleagues in its Dublin office, and this is where the compliance and governance matters relating to our VASP licence will be overseen, supported by a larger crypto-focused team which is based across multiple Paysafe offices in the UK and Europe,” the spokeswoman told the Sunday Independent.
Paysafe is the fourth company to get a VASP licence in Ireland under the new framework that came into effect in 2021.
Crypto exchanges Gemini, which is led by the Winklevoss twins, Coinbase, and Zodia, the institutional crypto trading service run by Standard Chartered, have secured VASP licences. It is understood that there are about 60 other companies that have filed or plan to file VASP licence applications in Ireland.
The VASP regime was introduced when the cryptocurrency market was still in a frenzy with high values for flagship digital currencies like Bitcoin. Since last year the market for cryptocurrencies has plummeted, thanks in large part to a number of high-profile collapses, the most notorious being the crypto exchange FTX. Its founder Sam Bankman-Fried faces fraud charges in the US.
