MiCA Article 60 notification

A bank, an investment firm, an asset manager or an electronic money institution may provide crypto-asset services without CASP authorisation by notifying its competent authority at least 40 working days before starting: the ACPR or the AMF in France, its own regulator if it is authorised in another Member State. ORWL Avocats prepares this notification as a lighter application for authorisation.

Who can notify, and for which services?

Article 60 of MiCA covers six categories of entities already authorised under another EU act. Each may notify only the crypto-asset services that extend its authorised activities.

Three limits come up often in practice:

• an electronic money institution may provide custody and transfer services only for the e-money tokens it issues itself;
• a UCITS management company may not notify the reception and transmission of orders, which MiCA reserves for alternative investment fund managers;
• an investment firm may not notify crypto-asset transfer services, which have no equivalent among investment services, although they are systematically linked to custody.

The notification goes to the competent authority of the home Member State. A bank or an investment firm authorised in another Member State therefore notifies its own regulator; the split between the French authorities applies only to institutions authorised in France. For those, the ACPR (Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution, the French banking and insurance supervisor) receives notifications from credit institutions, investment firms and electronic money institutions, and obtains the opinion of the AMF (Autorité des marchés financiers, the French financial markets regulator); the AMF receives those of asset management companies, market operators and central securities depositories (Article L. 54-10-7 of the French Monetary and Financial Code, in French).

The firm also advises foreign groups serving the French market under a MiCA passport.

Which services can an investment firm notify?

For investment firms, MiCA sets out an equivalence table: each crypto-asset service corresponds to an investment service. The firm may notify only the services whose equivalent already appears in its authorisation. A firm authorised only for the reception and transmission of orders therefore cannot notify custody.

For a service with no equivalent in its authorisation, the firm first extends its investment firm authorisation, or applies for CASP authorisation for that service, as French law allows. ORWL Avocats also advises CASPs moving the other way, towards investment services, as part of its crypto-assets and MiFID II practice.

Notification, CASP authorisation or subsidiary: which route?

Notification is the most direct route when the service falls within the institution’s status. It exempts the institution from the MiCA requirements on authorisation, own funds and qualifying holdings, which its original status already covers.

Other factors point to a different route:

• the service has no equivalent in the status: CASP authorisation for that service, or an authorised subsidiary;
• the group wants to isolate the crypto-asset business, its risks and its resources in a separate entity: an authorised CASP subsidiary; the distribution of its services by the other group entities must then be analysed, as it may amount to the reception and transmission of orders;
• the offer relies on a partner that is already authorised: each party’s role is classified service by service, and the distribution or outsourcing agreement reflects it.

The right to provide notified services ends with the original authorisation. An institution that loses its status also loses its crypto-asset services.

ORWL Avocats compares these routes with the institution’s management in light of its organisation, its clients and its timetable. The firm also handles applications for CASP authorisation when notification does not cover the project.

What does the notification file contain?

MiCA sets out the information to be notified, which two Commission regulations of February 2025 detail. The firm lists these texts in its MiCA tracker. The AMF and the ACPR published a common notification form on 30 January 2026. The file includes:

• a programme of operations: services, crypto-assets concerned, where and how the services are marketed;
• the anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CFT) framework: internal control and risk assessment;
• the business continuity plan;
• technical documentation of the ICT systems and security arrangements, with a description in plain language;
• the procedure for segregating clients’ crypto-assets and funds;
• documents specific to each service: custody policy, platform operating rules and market-abuse detection, commercial policy and pricing method, order execution policy, competence of advisers and portfolio managers, terms of the transfer service.

The common form also asks about services that give access to decentralised finance: it requires an assessment, protocol by protocol, of its decentralised nature and of the absence of any regulated service.

The institution need not send again identical information that its authority already holds, provided it confirms that the information is up to date. The firm’s experience shows, however, that the notification is a lighter application for authorisation, which brings together a large number of documents and requires overall consistency. In practice, the review also takes longer than the periods set by the Regulation. The firm starts from what the institution has already provided and drafts what is missing.

What obligations apply after notification?

The notifying institution becomes a crypto-asset service provider. It applies the MiCA rules as an authorised CASP does, except for authorisation, own funds and qualifying holdings:

• custody: agreement with each client, register of positions, segregation of assets, liability for losses;
• AML/CFT: obligations specific to crypto-assets, including the travel rule;
• digital operational resilience, which the institution already applies to its other activities under DORA;
• prevention and detection of market abuse in crypto-assets;
• conduct and communication rules towards clients, including for services distributed by partners.

The distribution model deserves particular attention. A bank that opens its services to fintechs, or entrusts part of the chain to a CASP, must classify the role of each party: a partner that transmits clients’ orders provides a crypto-asset service itself.

ORWL Avocats also advises on the MiCA compliance of CASPs, their AML/CFT framework and their DORA compliance, and on the agreements that organise distribution.

How ORWL Avocats handles a notification

The 40-working-day period runs from filing to the first service. The authority has 20 working days to confirm that the file is complete; a request for missing information suspends the period, for 20 working days at most, and the institution may not start while the notification remains incomplete. In practice, the review takes several months.

The firm drafts the documents or reviews those prepared by your teams, prepares exchanges with the ACPR and the AMF and follows up after filing.

Why work with ORWL Avocats?

Since 2018, ORWL Avocats has handled dozens of authorisations before the AMF and the ACPR, first under the French PSAN regime (the registration regime for digital asset service providers that applied before MiCA), then under MiCA, for platforms, custodians, brokers, fintechs adding crypto-asset services and financial groups notifying their services. The firm is ranked by Chambers FinTech and Leaders League. It takes part in industry work within ADAN (Association pour le développement des actifs numériques, the French digital asset industry association), on whose board one of its partners sits.

A lawyer specialised in banking and financial law applied to crypto-asset services brings what a consultant cannot: a legal classification of each service, backed by professional liability; professional secrecy, which protects exchanges and analyses; the drafting of partnership and distribution agreements; a position defended before the regulator on the client’s behalf.

Every matter is handled by a partner.