The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has added 15 crypto-asset service providers to its interim MiCA register, bringing the total number of authorized entities to 309 in the third update since the European Union’s transitional deadline passed on July 1.
According to the register update, the new entries include four banking institutions alongside a group of digital asset and payments firms. Germany and Denmark led by jurisdiction with three additions each, while Bulgaria and Latvia added two apiece. Belgium, Cyprus, Liechtenstein, and the Netherlands contributed one provider each.
BNY Mellon’s Belgian arm is the headline entry
BNY SA/NV, the Belgian subsidiary of US banking giant BNY Mellon, is the most prominent addition. The bank holds roughly $55.8 trillion in assets under custody and administration and processes about $2.5 trillion in payments daily, making it the largest custodian in the world by a wide margin.
It was also the first globally systemically important bank to offer regulated digital asset custody, launching that platform in the US in October 2022 with Fireblocks and Chainalysis as technology partners.
The MiCA authorization follows a pattern of jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction expansion rather than a single global rollout. In May, the bank announced a collaboration with Finstreet and the ADI Foundation to offer Bitcoin and Ether custody in the Abu Dhabi Global Market, with a stated roadmap toward stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets.
German cooperative banks continue to join the register
Three German lenders were added in the same batch: cooperative financial societies Spar-und Kreditbank Rheinstetten and VR-Bank Augsburg-Ostallgäu, along with Raiffeisenbank Falkenstein-Wörth.
The additions extend a trend visible across the German section of the register, which already includes Commerzbank, DekaBank, DZ Bank, and Baader Bank alongside a long list of Volksbank and Raiffeisenbank entities holding BaFin authorizations. Most of those cooperative lenders are licensed for a single service, execution of orders for crypto-assets on behalf of clients, which allows retail customers to buy crypto through the bank they already use.
BitPay and payment firms fill out the list
Payments processor BitPay was authorized by the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets, allowing it to offer crypto and stablecoin payment services across eligible EU markets. Under MiCA’s passporting mechanism, a single national authorization covers all 27 member states and three EEA countries.
Other new entries include Coinify, Latvia-registered Bleap and Nodu Digital, Denmark’s Januar and SafeLynx Technologies, and Bulgaria’s Altcoins BG and Digital Assist.
The composition marks a shift from the pre-deadline period, when the register filled largely with exchanges racing to retain retail order flow. Most of the non-bank firms in this batch operate payments, settlement or infrastructure services rather than trading venues.
Register has grown by 66 firms since the July 1 deadline
The register listed roughly 243 authorized CASPs on June 26, days before MiCA’s 18-month grandfathering period expired. The July 3 update added 37 firms to reach 280, including Standard Chartered, prime broker FalconX and Sygnum Europe. A further 14 were added on July 16 to hit 294, among them Ripple Payments Europe.
That marks 66 authorizations in a little over three weeks, after a cutoff that forced firms without full authorization out of the bloc. ESMA republishes the register weekly as national competent authorities feed approvals in, meaning the licensed market continues to be redrawn rather than fixed at the deadline.
The overall filtering remains severe. Around 3,389 crypto firms served EU customers under the old national regimes in May 2025, against 244 cleared to operate from July 1. Firms that missed the cutoff, including Binance’s French entity, had to wind down EU services and migrate users to licensed platforms.
The takeaway
Read narrowly, this is a routine weekly register update. Read against the arc of the past month, it is evidence that MiCA’s real effect is compositional rather than merely subtractive. The regime did not just cut Europe’s crypto market from thousands of firms to hundreds; it changed who those firms are. The register that emerged from the deadline is increasingly populated by custodian banks, cooperative lenders and payment processors, entities for which crypto is a line of business rather than the whole business.
Whether that is consolidation or maturation depends on what these licence-holders actually build. A register with the world’s largest custodian on it is a meaningful signal. A register where the stablecoin issuer list hasn’t moved in weeks is a reminder of how much of the framework is still waiting to be switched on.
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