Bybit Lands Austrian EMI License, Targeting Direct Bank Ties Across EEA

Bybit just got a major regulatory green light in Europe. Austria’s Financial Market Authority — the FMA — granted an electronic money institution license to Bybit Payments GmbH, the exchange’s local subsidiary, clearing the way for regulated payment services across the continent via the Bybit.eu platform.

The license is a pretty big deal for a crypto exchange trying to plant deeper roots in European finance. Bybit Payments GmbH can now offer regulated electronic money and payment services throughout the European Economic Area — all 30-plus countries — without needing separate approvals in each jurisdiction. That’s the whole point of getting licensed in Austria rather than, say, chasing individual country-by-country clearances. It’s faster, cleaner, and gives the company a single regulatory home base to work from.

Two Entities, Two Regulatory Tracks

Bybit runs a dual-entity structure in Europe, and that’s not an accident. Bybit EU GmbH holds authorization under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation — MiCAR — which it secured in May 2025. That entity handles digital asset services. Bybit Payments GmbH, the newly licensed one, focuses entirely on fiat money and e-money operations. Different regulators, different mandates, same parent company.

Georg Harer, managing director at both entities, called the EMI license “a vital milestone for Bybit’s long-term plans in Europe.” He didn’t elaborate publicly beyond that, but the company’s plans speak for themselves. Bybit wants to build out peer-to-peer transfers, open-banking solutions, and card programs — all sitting on top of the newly licensed payments infrastructure. Merchant solutions and strong customer authentication tools are also in the pipeline, per the company.

The separation matters for compliance reasons. European regulators have been pretty clear that crypto-asset services and traditional payment services operate under distinct legal frameworks. Running them through the same entity creates headaches. Bybit’s approach sidesteps that entirely by keeping the two businesses legally separate, each operating within its own designated regulatory lane.

Direct Bank Partnerships, Fewer Middlemen

Here’s where the EMI license gets commercially interesting. With it, Bybit Payments GmbH can form direct partnerships with European financial institutions and payment processors. Right now, like most crypto platforms, Bybit probably relies on third-party payment providers to move fiat money in and out. That’s expensive, slow, and creates dependency on intermediaries who can — and sometimes do — cut off service with little warning.

Direct bank ties change that math. Bybit can negotiate its own terms, build tighter integrations, and cut out at least some of the middlemen. It’s unclear exactly which institutions Bybit is already in talks with — the company didn’t name partners — but the license is the prerequisite for those conversations to happen at all.

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The broader context here is worth noting. More than 170 entities have registered under the MiCAR framework across Europe, but very few hold both comprehensive trading platform permissions and electronic payment authorizations simultaneously. Bybit’s dual setup puts it in a small group of operators with that kind of regulatory coverage. That’s a competitive edge, not just a compliance checkbox.

Europe’s Regulatory Moment for Crypto

MiCAR came into full effect across the EU and has been reshaping how crypto platforms operate in the region. Firms that dragged their feet on licensing are now scrambling. Bybit seems to have moved early — the MiCAR authorization in May 2025, and now the EMI license — which puts it ahead of a lot of competitors still working through regulatory backlogs.

Austria specifically has become a reasonably attractive home for fintech licensing. The FMA runs a structured process, and an Austrian EMI license carries EEA passporting rights, which is the real prize. You get one license, you can operate across the bloc. Simple enough in theory, genuinely difficult to execute in practice.

Bybit hasn’t said when the new payment features — the peer-to-peer transfers, card programs, open-banking tools — will actually launch. No timeline was given. The company framed the EMI license as the foundation for those products, not the launch of them. So there’s still work ahead.

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What’s clear is that Bybit is building a two-track European operation: one track for crypto assets under MiCAR, one track for payments under the FMA’s EMI framework. Georg Harer sits at the top of both tracks, which probably keeps the coordination manageable even as the regulatory complexity grows.

The FMA granted the license to Bybit Payments GmbH.