BNY's MiCA licence made headlines — the register says Belgium-only, custody-only
The world's largest custodian bank is now an authorised crypto-asset service provider in the EU. BNY SA/NV — the Belgian banking subsidiary of BNY (Bank of New York Mellon) — was authorised by the National Bank of Belgium on 20 July 2026 and appeared on ESMA's MiCA register shortly after. The crypto press covered it within the week, mostly with the same framing: a MiCA licence lets BNY offer crypto services "across the 27-member EU bloc."
The register says something more precise — and more interesting.
What the register shows
| Entity | BNY SA/NV |
| Register | ESMA interim MiCA register (CASPs) |
| LEI | MMYX0N4ZEZ13Z4XCG897 |
| Competent authority | National Bank of Belgium (NBB) |
| Authorised | 2026-07-20 |
| Services | (a) custody and administration of crypto-assets · (j) transfer services for crypto-assets |
| Member states | BE — Belgium only |
You don't have to take our word for it — ESMA publishes the register as a CSV, refreshed weekly. The service codes and member-state list above are the regulator's own.
The two details the headlines skipped
1. Belgium only — for now. MiCA authorisations passport across the EEA, but the register records where services are actually notified. BNY's entry lists exactly one member state: Belgium. Compare OSL EU GmbH, authorised two weeks earlier by Austria's FMA, whose entry lists thirty. The pan-EU framing in the coverage describes what the licence permits, not what BNY has notified. When the passporting notifications land, they'll show up in the register file — and in our feed.
2. Custody and transfer only. Of MiCA's ten service codes (a–j), BNY holds two: custody/administration and transfer services. No exchange services, no execution, no order reception. That's not a limitation to sneer at — it's a precise description of the business: BNY holds roughly $55 trillion in assets under custody, and this licence extends that custody franchise to crypto-assets in a regulated wrapper. But it means "BNY enters EU crypto trading" readings of this authorisation are wrong on the register's face.
The NBB's comment field on the entry even records the mechanics: completeness of the file confirmed 20 July, services eligible to start from 27 July.
TradFi is quietly filling the CASP register
BNY is the most famous name in a pattern our monitoring has been picking up all quarter. Of the 109 CASP authorisations in the last 90 days on ESMA's register, the entrants are increasingly not crypto-natives: KBC Bank, CaixaBank and N26 are already on it, and the same July window that added BNY also added German cooperative banks (Spar- und Kreditbank Rheinstetten, VR-Bank Augsburg-Ostallgäu) — institutions nobody associates with digital assets, acquiring the licence that lets them custody them.
Crypto-native infrastructure is landing alongside: BitPay B.V. was authorised on 15 July, OSL EU on 7 July. Kraken (Payward Europe), Crypto.com (Foris DAX), Bitstamp, bitFlyer Europe, OKX Europe and Gate are all on the register already.
Why the register beats the press release
Coverage of register events tends to repeat the announcement's framing. The register itself records scope: which services, which member states, effective when, under which authority — and it changes weeks before anyone writes it up, or without anyone writing it up at all (we found Brite Payments' UK EMI licence and Amazon's UK e-money authorisation that way).
License Watch now monitors ESMA's MiCA register weekly alongside the FCA, EBA, FINTRAC, FinCEN and ASIC registers — every grant, cancellation and scope change, each line citing the regulator's own record. No claim without a citation.
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PaymentProviders.io is an informational service. Registry data belongs to the issuing regulators; status labels reflect the regulator's own wording. This article is not financial or legal advice, and PaymentProviders.io is not affiliated with BNY.