The week to 24 July was the fastest in our archive — 15 new firms in eight days. But the more interesting finding is structural: Germany's cooperative banking network has been quietly building a crypto offering for nine months, and it has split the work so that sixteen local banks route orders while a single central institution holds the assets.
Published: July 2026 · Data as of 24 July 2026 · Reading time: ~6 minutes
Key Takeaways
- The register grew from 293 to 308 authorised firms in eight days — 13.1 per week, the fastest rate across our thirteen snapshots.
- Banks are not newcomers here. Roughly one register entry in six is a credit institution — 50 of 308 firms — and they have been arriving steadily since February 2025.
- 17 German cooperative banks are now listed. 16 registered for exactly one service — execution of orders. The exception is DZ BANK, the network's central institution, which holds custody, execution and transfers.
- That is a deliberate hub-and-spoke design: the local Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken own the customer relationship; the central institution carries the custody burden.
- Credit institutions do not need a CASP licence at all. Under MiCA Article 60 they notify their regulator 40 working days in advance — which is why banks appear in the register in numbers.
The fastest eight days on record
We keep dated snapshots of the ESMA register rather than relying on the live file, which is overwritten without an archive. That lets us measure the rate of authorisation, not just the total.
| Snapshot | Authorised firms | Change | Rate/week |
|---|---|---|---|
| 23 Mar 2026 | 176 | +21 | 5.2 |
| 24 Apr 2026 | 189 | +13 | 2.8 |
| 16 Jul 2026 | 293 | +104 | 8.8 |
| 24 Jul 2026 | 308 | +15 | 13.1 |
Over the full year the register went from 44 firms to 308 — a 600% expansion in 378 days. The transitional period that ended on 1 July 2026 pulled applications forward, and the queue is still clearing.
One note on counting: the register holds 312 records for 308 distinct firms. We count firms, not rows. Sixteen entries were added and one disappeared — Bulgaria's Belayer, which did not leave but was re-keyed after acquiring an LEI.
Why banks show up without needing a licence
It is tempting to read each new bank as a landmark. It usually isn't, and the reason is structural.
Under Article 60 of MiCA, a credit institution may provide crypto-asset services without applying for CASP authorisation. It notifies the competent authority of its home member state at least 40 working days before starting, supplying a programme of operations, internal controls, custody and segregation procedures, AML and ICT arrangements. The bank is already authorised and supervised under the banking rulebook; MiCA layers the crypto-specific requirements on top rather than starting from scratch.
The practical consequence: for a bank, adding crypto services is an incremental compliance exercise, not a new licence application. That is why 50 of the 308 firms on the register — one in six — are credit institutions, and why they have been appearing consistently since Clearstream Banking and BBVA in the first quarter of 2025. (ESMA does not tag credit institutions in the file, so that figure is our own classification by legal name; treat it as a close estimate rather than an official count.)
The cooperative network's hub-and-spoke build
Here is where the data gets genuinely interesting. Filter the register to German cooperative banks and a pattern appears that no single entry would reveal.
| Period | Cooperative banks added |
|---|---|
| Nov 2025 | 2 |
| Dec 2025 | 7 (incl. DZ BANK) |
| May–Jul 2026 | 8 |
Seventeen in total — and 16 of them registered for execution of orders and nothing else. The single exception is DZ BANK, the network's central institution, which holds custody, execution and transfers for a sector of roughly 700 local banks.
That is a hub-and-spoke design: the local banks own the customer relationship and route orders, while custody — MiCA's heaviest set of obligations — sits once, centrally. Among the 34 other credit institutions on the register, 22 hold custody; for the cooperative network it is 1 in 17.
We unpack that pattern, and how banks enter MiCA at all, in a dedicated piece: Banks and MiCA: how 50 credit institutions entered crypto.
Who else joined this week
Three of the fifteen new entrants are cooperative banks (Raiffeisenbank Falkenstein-Wörth, VR-Bank Augsburg-Ostallgäu, Spar- und Kreditbank Rheinstetten) — the newest spokes on the wheel described above.
The rest are a mix of institutions and crypto-native firms:
- BNY SA/NV (Belgium) — the European bank of BNY Mellon, supervised by the ECB and the National Bank of Belgium, registered for custody and transfers. A significant name, though not the register's first major custodian: Clearstream Banking has been listed since February 2025.
- BitPay B.V. (Netherlands) — one of the longest-running crypto payment processors.
- Coinify (Denmark), justTRADE (Germany), Januar and SafeLynx (Denmark), Bleap and Nodu Digital (Latvia), Altcoins and Digital Assist (Bulgaria), Paymonade (Liechtenstein), SG Digital Assets (Cyprus).
By country: Germany added four (61 → 65), Denmark three (4 → 7), Bulgaria and Latvia two each. Denmark nearly doubling its register in a week is the sharpest relative move.
One data note: the register lists Spar- und Kreditbank Rheinstetten with an authorisation date of 27 July 2026 — three days after the snapshot it appears in. It is the only forward-dated record among 312, and is either a pre-dated authorisation or a source data-entry error. We reproduce the register's own value rather than silently correcting it.
What did not change
- EMT issuers: 21. No new e-money token issuer. The stablecoin side of MiCA remains a small, slow-moving club.
- ART issuers: still zero. The asset-referenced token register is now published as an empty file rather than being absent — confirming it is genuinely empty.
- Non-compliant entities: 164. No new warnings this window, after a long run of additions from Italy's CONSOB. See why Italy holds almost all of them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do banks need a MiCA licence to offer crypto? No. Under MiCA Article 60, a credit institution may provide crypto-asset services by notifying its home regulator at least 40 working days in advance, supplying a programme of operations and details of its controls, custody and AML arrangements. It does not apply for separate CASP authorisation.
How many banks are on the MiCA register? About one entry in six — 50 of the 308 authorised firms as of 24 July 2026. They include 17 German cooperative banks plus BBVA, KBC, Clearstream Banking, CACEIS, LGT, Bank Frick, Banca Sella, Swissquote, N26, Trade Republic and BNY SA/NV. ESMA does not flag credit institutions in the register, so this is a classification by legal name rather than an official tally.
Why do most German cooperative banks not offer crypto custody? Because DZ BANK, the network's central institution, holds the custody registration for the group. Sixteen of the seventeen local cooperative banks registered for execution of orders only, leaving safekeeping — and its heavier MiCA obligations — with the central institution.
How many firms hold a MiCA CASP authorisation now? 308 distinct firms as of 24 July 2026, across 312 register records, up from 44 firms in July 2025.
Sources
- MICA Watch snapshot archive of the ESMA CASP register, 11 July 2025 – 24 July 2026. Browse the full register, the CASP hub, or profiles for Germany, Belgium and Denmark.
- Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 (MiCA), Article 60 — provision of crypto-asset services by credit institutions on notification. See MiCA regulators and the EU framework.
- Entity identification via Legal Entity Identifier; BNY SA/NV confirmed as LEI MMYX0N4ZEZ13Z4XCG897.