Neither ESMA nor Sweden's Finansinspektionen will say whether distributing crypto services under your own brand requires a MiCA licence. Both answer that it depends on how the service works.
Photo: The EU securities regulator ESMA and Sweden's Finansinspektionen get the same question, and give the same answer.
A model is taking hold in the Nordics: a company with a MiCA licence performs the crypto services, while a company without one carries the brand and meets the customers. Kaupr put the boundary question to both the EU securities regulator ESMA and Sweden's Finansinspektionen. Both answered in writing through their press offices, and both leave the decisive question open.
MiCA allows crypto-asset service providers — CASPs — to outsource certain services or operational functions, subject to the conditions set out in Article 73.
There are limits, ESMA tells Kaupr.
"Outsourcing cannot result in the delegation of the CASP's responsibility, nor alter the relationship between the CASP and its clients. ESMA has consistently highlighted that the authorised CASP must remain fully responsible for the service provided and remain the contractual counterparty to the client."
That gives one test: who the customer has the contract with, and who carries the responsibility.
Does marketing and distributing crypto-asset services under your own brand, to your own customer base, amount to providing a crypto-asset service — even where an authorised CASP performs execution and custody behind the interface?
ESMA declines to answer. "ESMA is not in a position to comment on this as the assessment depends on the specific facts and circumstances of the arrangement," the regulator tells Kaupr.
Finansinspektionen answers in the same direction.
"Whether a MiCA authorisation is required would depend on how the service works in practice. It is important that only firms that meet MiCA requirements perform authorised activities," the Swedish regulator tells Kaupr.
Two regulators, the same answer: it depends.
ESMA instead points to another Q&A on its own site. That one concerns a different setup — an unregulated company as the commercial counterparty to the client, within the same group as a CASP — and has been listed as submitted but unanswered since 5 January 2026.
Read the question at ESMA: Q&A on group structures under MiCA
Kaupr asked both which authority supervises the distribution when a CASP authorised in one member state serves customers in another through a locally branded partner.
"Under MiCA, CASP authorisation is granted by the competent authority of the Member State where the provider has its registered office and that authorisation is valid across the Union. The home competent authority is responsible for the authorisation and ongoing supervision of the authorised CASP," ESMA says.
Finansinspektionen says the same. "The main supervisory responsibility for an authorised CASP always lies with the home member state. Finansinspektionen will cooperate with the home supervisory authority as needed."
Both answers concern the CASP. Neither says who supervises the distribution.
Kaupr also asked Finansinspektionen specifically about Goobit, whose MiCA application was refused on 2 July and which has appealed. The question was whether the refusal has any bearing on the company's ability to act as a distribution partner for an authorised CASP.
"What matters in the provision of services is the role that a company has in the setup and whether the activities it performs require authorisation under MiCA," the regulator answers.
The refusal is therefore not in itself a bar to acting as a distribution partner. It is the role that decides.
The background to the questions is an earlier Q&A answer from the European Commission, published on ESMA's site in September 2024.
The question there is whether a CASP may designate persons or firms to provide crypto-asset services on its behalf as agents, as MiFID II allows, where they are not themselves authorised. The Commission answers that MiCA contains no provision allowing this. If a CASP appoints an agent, the agent must itself be a CASP.
Between that prohibition and the room for outsourcing in Article 73 sits the space where branded distribution takes place. Where the line runs has not been settled.
Read more: ESMA Q&A 2143 on agents under MiCA
Sources: ESMA, Finansinspektionen, European Commission
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