Regulationjul 17, 2026

ESMA’s MiCA Register Hits 294 CASPs as New Additions Slow to 14 From 37

ESMA added 14 crypto firms, including Ripple Payments Europe and several banks, to its MiCA register—a sharp slowdown from the prior 37-firm batch.

Sophie Bergmann

On-chain Analyst. Sophie reads wallets, flows and network

2 min read

ESMA’s MiCA Register Hits 294 CASPs as New Additions Slow to 14 From 37

Europe’s crypto licensing tally climbed to 294 on Thursday after the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) added 14 new firms to its Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) register — a sharp deceleration from the 37 companies added in the previous batch on July 3.

The latest update is the second major post-deadline expansion of the register since MiCA’s transitional period lapsed, and it pulls in a mix of a payments unit tied to Ripple and several regional banks entering the regulated crypto-asset service provider (CASP) framework.

Ripple’s payments arm joins the register

Ripple Payments Europe SA, the blockchain company’s European payments subsidiary, is among the 14 new entrants. Its inclusion gives Ripple a formal MiCA license to operate payment-related crypto services across the bloc under the new EU-wide regime, rather than relying on a patchwork of national approvals.

The other new additions skew heavily toward traditional finance. Portugal’s Bison Bank and Croatia’s state-owned Hrvatska poštanska banka (HPB) both secured CASP status, alongside two German cooperative banks — Volksbank Schwarzwald-Donau-Neckar and Raiffeisenbank Auerbach-Freihung. Liechtenstein-based Kaiser Partner Privatbank also joined, extending the reach of private banking groups into regulated crypto services.

A slower pace after the initial surge

The drop from 37 new licenses on July 3 to 14 on this update suggests the initial rush of applicants clearing MiCA’s transitional backlog has largely worked through the pipeline, with fresh approvals now trickling in at a more measured rate.

The 294-firm register already lists established banking names such as Spain’s BBVA and CaixaBank, Germany’s Commerzbank, France’s CACEIS Bank and Standard Chartered Luxembourg, underscoring how deeply traditional lenders have folded crypto custody and trading into their regulated product lines under the bloc’s licensing regime.

Stablecoin registers untouched

ESMA reported no changes to its separate registers for electronic money tokens (EMTs) — stable-value tokens pegged to a single official currency — or asset-referenced tokens (ARTs), which track baskets of currencies or commodities. Those categories remain governed by a distinct MiCA approval track that has moved independently of the broader CASP licensing wave.

For crypto firms eyeing the EU market, the CASP register functions as the passport that allows a licensed entity to offer services across all 27 member states without seeking separate national sign-offs. As the count of licensed providers grows past 294, the register is becoming a de facto map of which exchanges, custodians, banks and payment firms have cleared Europe’s compliance bar — information that increasingly shapes where institutional capital and retail platforms choose to route business.