MiCA made you the issuer. The GENIUS Act hasn't decided what to do about that.

If you hold an EMI licence in the European Union, you occupy a position that is easy to miss from the inside. Under MiCA, Article 48(1) permits an e-money token to be offered to the public in the Union only by an issuer authorised as a credit institution or an electronic money institution. Narrow exemptions in Article 48(4) and (5) aside, those are the two doors.

That is not theoretical. ESMA's interim register, updated at the end of July, carries 41 e-money token white papers from 21 distinct issuers. Eighteen are electronic money institutions and three are credit institutions — six to one by issuer count. No asset-referenced tokens are registered at all. Whatever EU-issued e-money tokens become, EMIs are currently the channel.

What MiCA gives you, and what it takes back

Your existing licence is enough: unlike asset-referenced tokens, there is no separate MiCA authorisation to obtain. The second subparagraph of Article 48(1) lets other persons offer the token with the issuer's written consent, and provides that those persons shall comply with Articles 50 and 53 — so a distributor is directly bound by the interest prohibition and the marketing rules, even though it is not the issuer.

Two clocks run first. Article 48(6) requires notification to your competent authority at least 40 working days before you intend to offer. Article 51(11) requires the white paper to be notified at least 20 working days before publication, and then says something worth reading twice: competent authorities shall not require prior approval of it. That is the structural difference from asset-referenced tokens, where Article 21 deems the paper approved.

The absence of approval is not an absence of consequence. Article 52(1) makes the issuer and the members of its administrative, management or supervisory body liable to holders for information that is not complete, fair or clear, or that is misleading — any one limb suffices — and deprives of legal effect any contractual attempt to exclude that liability. Article 52(3) puts the evidential burden on the holder and Article 52(4) gives a qualified safe harbour for the summary, while Article 52(5) leaves national civil liability untouched.

Then the economics tighten. Article 49 requires redemption at par, at any time, in funds other than electronic money, with no redemption fee — subject only to the liquidity fees on redemptions that Article 46(1)(a) contemplates inside a recovery plan, applied to e-money token issuers by Article 55. Article 50 prohibits granting interest, and its third paragraph treats as interest any benefit related to the length of time during which a holder holds the token. Article 54 requires at least 30% of funds received to sit in separate accounts at credit institutions, the remainder in highly liquid instruments denominated in the currency the token references.

Article 49(6) removes redemption fees and Article 50 removes interest. MiCA does not otherwise cap what an issuer may charge, so an e-money token P&L turns on reserve yield plus fees that are not time-linked. Where exactly that line sits is not settled by the text: the second sentence of Article 50(3) is effects-based, catching net compensation or discounts with an effect equivalent to interest, including through the pricing of other products.

The American question, and why it is stuck

The GENIUS Act, signed 18 July 2025, was meant to open a route. Section 18(a) disapplies the Section 3 prohibitions for a foreign payment stablecoin issuer where four conditions are all met: the home regime has been determined comparable by the Secretary of the Treasury under subsection (b); the issuer is registered with the Comptroller of the Currency; it holds reserves in a US financial institution sufficient for US customer liquidity, unless a reciprocal arrangement under subsection (d) permits otherwise; and the home jurisdiction is neither sanctioned nor designated a primary money laundering concern.

An EU EMI cannot be a permitted payment stablecoin issuer directly — Section 2(23) defines that as a person formed in the United States. And the reciprocal arrangements in Section 18(d) are not a second route: under Section 18(a)(3) they relax the US-reserves condition, nothing more. Every path runs through a Treasury determination.

None has been made, for any jurisdiction. Section 18(b)(6) required Treasury to issue rules carrying out Section 18 by 18 July 2026. Treasury opened the file — its advance notice of 19 September 2025 devotes a section to foreign issuers and asks what should govern a comparability determination — but no proposed rule implementing Section 18 has followed. Treasury's only GENIUS Act proposed rule to date, of 3 April 2026, addresses whether a state regime is substantially similar to the federal one, which is a different question. Section 18(b)(1) requires a justification published in the Federal Register before a determination takes effect; nothing has been published, so nothing has taken effect.

The arithmetic compounds it. Under Section 18(b)(3) Treasury must decide within 210 days of a substantially complete request, but the clock starts only when someone files — a request filed today runs to roughly 2 March 2027. Section 20 sets the effective date at the earlier of 18 months after enactment, 18 January 2027, or 120 days after the primary Federal payment stablecoin regulators — the OCC, FDIC, NCUA and Federal Reserve, per Section 2(25) — issue final regulations. Treasury's own Section 18 rules would not start that clock. None of the four has issued a final rule, and comment periods run into September.

The Comptroller has drafted the dependency into its forms. Its notice of 27 July 2026 — a request for comment on a proposed information collection under proposed 12 CFR 15.32, itself still an unfinalised rule — would require foreign applicants to submit evidence of a Treasury comparability determination. Under Section 18(c)(1)(B) a registration is deemed approved 30 days after filing unless rejected, and Section 18(c)(1)(C) makes the Treasury determination one of five factors the Comptroller shall consider in deciding whether to reject. So the determination is not a formal gate on the filing. It is the factor most likely to close it.

Whether the American market is worth the wait

Set the blockage aside and ask what sits on the other side. Section 4(a)(11) prohibits a permitted payment stablecoin issuer or a foreign payment stablecoin issuer from paying holders interest or yield solely in connection with holding, use or retention. That binds an EU issuer directly, and Article 50 of MiCA does the same on this side. If the recurring economics are reserve yield in both jurisdictions, the case for US access is distribution rather than margin — a real case, but a weaker one than usually made, and worth stating before anyone builds a US entity assuming the American market pays differently.

The one published bilateral statement went somewhere else

On 14 July 2026, four days before the deadline lapsed, the US Treasury and HM Treasury published a joint statement on stablecoins through the Transatlantic Taskforce for Markets of the Future, a standing bilateral body established in September 2025: ten shared principles and an intention to explore a pathway for stablecoins issued in each jurisdiction to reach the other's market. It contains no determination, no timeline, and no reference to the European Union.

Section 18(d) lets the Secretary create reciprocal arrangements with comparable jurisdictions, requires Federal Register publication 90 days before entry into force, and says the Secretary should complete them within two years of enactment — 18 July 2027. "Should", not "shall". We would not over-read a statement of principles; it is the only published bilateral statement on stablecoins we have found, and it did not come here.

What this changes if you never issue a token

Most EMIs will not issue one. The second-order effects are likelier to reach you.

Article 70(3) requires a crypto-asset service provider to place client funds, other than e-money tokens, with a credit institution or a central bank by the end of the following business day. An EMI is not on that list. If your proposition to crypto clients has been safeguarding-grade fiat accounts, the text closes that door.

Two adjacent provisions are worth reading carefully, because neither reopens it. Article 70(5) disapplies paragraphs 2 and 3 where the CASP is itself an electronic money institution, payment institution or credit institution — which helps a CASP already holding your kind of licence, not an EMI selling accounts to one. Article 70(4) permits a PSD2-authorised third party to provide the attached payment services; it does not change where Article 70(3) requires the funds to sit.

The population has also changed shape, twice. The European Banking Authority's opinion of 12 February 2026 recorded that more than 100 crypto-asset service providers had by then approached national authorities or applied for authorisation as payment service providers, because the EBA's position is that transfers and custody of e-money tokens can constitute payment services requiring PSD2 authorisation. From 2 March 2026 it advised authorities to require firms that had neither applied nor partnered to cease those services and offboard the affected clients. Then MiCA's own transitional period under Article 143(3) expired on 1 July 2026. Both dates moved firms between categories, and the February figure is a floor from six months ago rather than a current queue.

What's unresolved

Whether the EU will be found comparable. Nothing published either way. The determination is discretionary — Section 18(b)(1) says the Secretary may — and only on a recommendation from every other member of the Stablecoin Certification Review Committee, which under Section 2(27) means the Chair of the Federal Reserve, or the Vice Chair for Supervision as delegated, and the Chair of the FDIC. Each holds an effective veto. The honest position is not that the EU is unlikely to qualify; it is that no determination exists and no rules frame one.

Whether Treasury could move before its own rules. We would model US access as unavailable until the Section 18 rules appear. But nothing in Section 18(b) makes a determination conditional on those rules existing, so a reader who thinks Treasury could act first is not misreading the statute.

Whether the clock can even start yet. Section 20 says the Act "shall take effect" on the earlier of two dates, neither of which has arrived. Whether a request under Section 18(b)(2) filed today starts the 210-day clock, or whether it waits for the Act to commence, is not addressed anywhere we have found — and it decides whether filing now buys eight months or nothing.

When the Act takes effect. 18 January 2027 is the latest possible date. Final rules from the primary Federal regulators before roughly 20 September 2026 would pull the trigger forward. Section 20(2) also refers to "any final regulations" by the regulators in the plural, leaving open whether one agency finalising suffices.

What bites in January rather than 2028. Section 3(b)(1) bars digital asset service providers from offering non-compliant payment stablecoins in the US from 18 July 2028. Section 3(b)(2), which bars them from offering a foreign-issued stablecoin unless the issuer has the technological capability to comply with lawful orders, carries no delayed date on the face of the text. Read literally it applies from the effective date, eighteen months earlier.

Who can even file. Section 18(b)(2) permits a request from a foreign payment stablecoin issuer or a foreign payment stablecoin regulator. The Act never defines the latter. That decides whether your national competent authority can file for you, or whether you file yourself.

What we would do this quarter

If issuance is on the roadmap, run the 40-working-day and 20-working-day clocks against a real date, and get your management body comfortable with Article 52 liability before the white paper is drafted rather than after. If it is not, the more useful work is on the counterparty side: establish which of your crypto-sector clients now hold or have applied for a payments authorisation, because that status changes both what you can offer them and what you are exposed to.

We are a technology provider — we hold no licence and we do not hold client funds — so none of these authorisation decisions are ours to make. One thing we would like to know, because we have not found it on the record: has any EU issuer, or any national competent authority, actually filed a comparability request? If the clock has not started, that is worth knowing. If it has, more so.