Crypto funding compliance for brokers in Seychelles
Financial Services Authority (FSA) · Securities Dealer Licence (SDL)
The most popular offshore booking centre of the last five years, now with a separate VASP regime.
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The SDL is not a VASP licenceUnder the VASP Act 2024 a Securities Dealer Licence is explicitly not a virtual-asset licence, which is why crypto funding is routed through licensed processors.
With several hundred securities dealers on the FSA's public register, Seychelles has become the default offshore home for mid-size FX and CFD brokers. The licence needs roughly USD 100k of capital and a local office and directors, and the regulator is responsive without being adversarial. AML obligations sit under the AML/CFT Act 2020, whose section 47 requires records to be kept for at least seven years. Before you build a client-acquisition plan around the licence, read the FSA's Communiqué No. 1 of 2021. It states that a Securities Dealer Licence covers securities business done in Seychelles and is not to be used to solicit clients for business carried on elsewhere.
The main recent change is the Virtual Asset Service Providers Act 2024. Seychelles now licenses VASPs separately, and an SDL is not a VASP licence. A broker that takes crypto deposits into its own wallets, converts client crypto or holds it risks stepping into the VASP perimeter. Most SDL brokers therefore route crypto funding through licensed third-party processors and receive settlement. That keeps the perimeter question clean, but the monitoring obligation stays with the broker.
Banks and PSPs ask harder questions than the FSAIt is your banking and PSP counterparties, rather than the regulator, who will ask what happens when a wallet matches a list.
Seychelles brokers depend on their banking and PSP relationships, and those counterparties increasingly ask harder questions than the regulator does. How do you screen crypto-origin funds? What happens when a wallet matches a list? Can you produce the record? A clear, verifiable answer keeps those relationships open, so it matters commercially as well as for compliance.
KYTGate ingests your processor's KYT results alongside official sanctions data and issuer freeze checks, applies your policy, and gives you the signed decision trail your bank's due-diligence questionnaire is asking about.
Questions brokers ask about Seychelles
Does the Seychelles FSA allow Securities Dealer licensees to accept crypto deposits?
The FSA has not banned it, but since the Virtual Asset Service Providers Act 2024 an SDL is explicitly not a VASP licence. Taking crypto into your own wallets, converting it or holding it can fall inside the VASP perimeter. Most SDL brokers route crypto funding through a licensed third-party processor and receive fiat settlement; whether your arrangement stays outside the perimeter is a question for Seychelles counsel.
Which rules apply to crypto funding for a Seychelles broker?
The Securities Act and licence conditions, the AML/CFT Act 2020 and its regulations (due diligence, monitoring, record-keeping, reporting to the FIU), the VASP Act 2024 if any activity is a virtual-asset service, and Seychelles' sanctions framework. Using a processor does not transfer the AML monitoring obligation on funds you credit.
What evidence do the FSA and your bank expect?
The FSA expects an AML programme you can evidence per transaction. In practice the harder questions come from banking and PSP counterparties: how crypto-origin funds are screened, what happens on a match, and whether the record can be produced. A signed, replayable per-deposit record answers both audiences.
What is the Travel Rule status in Seychelles?
Travel Rule obligations attach to licensed VASPs under the 2024 Act and the AML/CFT framework. A broker using a licensed processor generally receives, rather than originates, originator and beneficiary data. Whether and how long you must keep it is not settled for every structure; check with counsel.
What does KYTGate provide for a Seychelles broker?
It ingests your processor's KYT results next to official sanctions data and live issuer freeze reads, applies your written policy, records a signed receipt per decision, and produces the evidence pack and monthly report your bank's due-diligence questionnaire is asking about. Travel Rule data passed on by the processor is stored as received; nothing is originated.
General information, not legal advice. Where an answer says to check with counsel, the point depends on your structure and needs a lawyer's view.
Sources
Official documents only: the regulator, the FIU, a government legislation portal or an official law-report site. We read each one before citing it here. Where a document is dated or superseded, the note says so.
- Virtual Asset Service Providers Act, 2024 (Act 12 of 2024) · SeyLIIThe Act that separated VASP licensing from everything else. Its First Schedule lists the categories: wallet provider, exchange, broking, investment provider.
- Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism Act, 2020 · SeyLIISection 47: seven years minimum, thirty years in digital form for banks and certain other institutions. This is SeyLII's 2020 consolidation and the page itself notes later amendments are not applied, so read it as the base text.
- Capital Markets register · FSA SeychellesThe official list of licensed securities dealers and representatives. Check a counterparty here rather than taking a licence number on trust.
- VASP legal framework · FSA SeychellesThe Act plus the nine sets of 2024 VASP regulations (licensing, capital, cyber security, advertising, client asset safekeeping, ICO/NFT registration and the AML/CFT amendments).
- Communiqué No. 1 of 2021: Awareness of Securities Dealers Businesses · FSA SeychellesThe FSA's statement that the licence covers securities business done in Seychelles and is not a passport for soliciting clients elsewhere.
Links to third-party and government sites; KYTGate does not control their content and they may move. If one is dead or has been superseded, tell us and we will fix the page.