UK FCA Grants Coinbase E-Money License

In its latest announcement, Coinbase has received the e-money license from the Financial Conduct Authority of the UK that involves regulation compliance. This move will help the exchange in expanding its business in UK and EU.

Coinbase E-money license from UK FCA

Coinbase, one of the world’s largest and most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, has obtained an e-money license from the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) marking its official digital money services expansion in the UK and EU.

Now, Coinbase is able to not only issue e-money in the UK but also provide payment services here. Furthermore, when it comes to the segregation of client funds that require additional checks is now passed by Coinbase. This means the fiat balances of customers are separate from the operational funds of Coinbase and both the funds will be kept in different bank accounts.

The idea behind this segregation is if UK Financial Conduct Authority stops operating any time, your fiat currency overlooked by the exchange won’t get lost.

It has been reported that due to e-money being different from cryptocurrencies, the license has certain stringent regulations which are to safeguard the consumers’ interests and needs to be followed.  

This e-money license will help in faster payments that will further simplify the process of adding and withdrawing money from the exchange. The CEO of UK Coinbase, Zeeshan Feroz explained:

“U.K. customers will benefit from faster, safer and seamless bank transfers. We will start with a pilot, giving a small number of institutional users access to Faster Payments. In the coming weeks, we will begin rolling out to all U.K. customers, making the Coinbase experience increasingly easier.”

Also, read… Coinbase Now Helps You Calculate YourCryptocurrency Taxes

Coinbase debacles: SegWit, lawsuits, user information…

The UK regulators and financial authorities have been wary of cryptocurrencies and warned against them. And now it has granted the license to Coinbase that comes with some rigid compulsory regulations.

This is not the first time that Coinbase has gotten chummy with the authorities. A few weeks back, the exchange was asked to hand over its 12,000 users’ data that covered taxpayer ID number, name, date of birth, address, transaction logs and account statements.

Coinbase is surely complying with the requirements of authorities but fails to comply with the expectation of its users as just yesterday Coinbase was accused by one of its users. He claimed that its SegWit implementation is not proper that resulted in the loss of his bitcoins. Though, Coinbase later rectified the mistake and returned the faulted user’s fund.

If we go a few more days back, the exchange was hit by two lawsuits that accused Coinbase of insider trading and unfair business practices.

Grated the e-money license by the UK FCA is certainly a good news but given how Coinbase keeps on retracting back on its commitments also raises a lot of concern here.

What are your views on Coinbase obtaining the UK e-money license? Let us know your thoughts below!