The French National Assembly has voted in favor of legislating stricter licensing rules for new cryptocurrency firms in order to harmonize local laws with proposed European Union (EU) standards.
The vote was passed with 109 votes (60.5%) in favor to 71 (39.5%) against. With the French Senate having already passed the bill, it will now be passed to president Emmanuel Macron who has 15 days to either approve it or send it back to the legislature.
✅ Projet de loi DDADUE dans les domaines de l’économie, de la santé, du travail, des transports et de l’agriculture | Adoption par l’Assemblée nationale, compte tenu du texte de la commission mixte paritaire.En savoir plus ➡️ https://t.co/CDlQxPrs1b#DirectAN pic.twitter.com/PZ2uuC4MrS
If passed, the new law would oblige France-based cryptocurrency service providers to comply with stricter anti-money laundering rules, show that customer funds are segregated, adhere to new guidelines on reporting to regulators and provide more detailed risk and conflict of interest disclosures as a means to strengthen consumer protection.
The contents of the bill would not however apply to the 60 crypto firms registered with the Financial Markets Authority (AMF), the nation’s financial regulator. These firms will continue to comply with the AMF’s rules until the likely passing of the EU’s own crypto regulations with the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) bill.
The stricter rules would therefore only apply to crypto firms that register from July 2023 onwards.
Among the 60-AMF registered companies include Binance, which recently began piloting in-store payments in France with the cloud-based payment platform Ingenico via Binance Pay.
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