Société Générale - FORGE (SG-FORGE), the French multinational bank’s crypto-focused subsidiary, announced that it has obtained a Digital Asset Service Provider (DASP) license from the French Financial Markets Authority (AMF) in a press release yesterday. According to the release:
“The DASP license approval represents the highest level of regulatory certification currently possible for digital asset activities. It demonstrates a comprehensive level of security and reliability of compliance, internal control and cybersecurity processes and systems, as well as the maintenance of sufficient regulatory capital.”
SG-FORGE is the first company to receive a DASP license from the French authorities, as confirmed on the AMF website. It first registered as a DASP (the first level of regulatory oversight) back in September of last year.
Registration with the AMF is mandatory for any entity wishing to provide one or more of the following services: digital asset custody, buying or selling digital assets in currencies classed as legal tender, trading digital assets against other digital assets, and operating a digital asset trading platform.
The AMF assesses compliance with anti-money laundering (AML), and combatting the financing of terrorism (CFT) procedures, and performs checks on the managers and beneficial owners of an organization before registration can be completed.
For companies which are established in France there is a further option to become licensed, although thus far only SG-FORGE has taken this extra step.
Licensed DASPs must comply with a further set of rules, regarding financial resources and organization and conduct of business. These include things such as having indemnity insurance or suitable funding, sufficient human and technical resources, resilient systems and procedures, and clear communication with clients.
SG-FORGE stated that becoming licensed “by a major EU national regulator is also an important step for the development of the Euro Coinvertible.” As we Observed in April, this institutional euro-pegged stablecoin deployed on the Ethereum public blockchain is the first of its kind.
So SG-FORGE is forging ahead (sorry…) with a number of industry firsts in Europe that we can actually support and believe in.
This is in contrast to Crédit Agricole and Santander’s asset servicing arm, CACEIS Bank, which we Observed last month claiming to be the first crypto custodian registered as a DASP by the AMF. Sadly, by any metric other than the unknown one they seemed to be working from this was categorically not true, as many crypto custodians had been registered as much as three years earlier.