Bybit just got permission to run payments through a brand-new Austrian subsidiary, while its crypto business sits in another one next door. Same login. Same user experience. Two different legal entities chasing two different regulatory blueprints. The split happened because Europe's rulebook didn't leave the exchange a choice.
The Austrian financial regulator handed Bybit Payments GmbH an electronic money institution licence this week. That company now handles e-money and payment services under PSD2 rules. Meanwhile, Bybit EU GmbH, which got its MiCA crypto authorisation back in May 2025, keeps doing what it always did: custody, trading, client transfers. Separate capital buffers. Separate safeguarding obligations. One account on bybit.eu lets you move between both as if the legal distinction doesn't exist.
Why One Company Became Two
MiCA and PSD2 don't talk to each other. Each set of rules demands its own compliance machinery, its own risk management, its own capital requirements. Cramming both into a single licence would mean satisfying every requirement from both regimes simultaneously, which regulators won't allow. So Bybit went the route that makes sense: build the legal structure the rules demand, then hide it behind a single product interface.
Kraken walked this same path years ago. The Irish exchange holds an EMI licence since 2023 and added MiCA authorisation a year later. Crypto.com did it backwards, starting with an EMI licence in Malta in 2021, adding MiCA in January 2025, then coming back for a third separate licence in February 2026 just to cover stablecoins that technically live in both rulebooks at once. None of these companies wanted seventeen different logins any more than Bybit does.
Products That Don't Exist Yet
Here's the catch: Bybit Payments GmbH hasn't turned on a single feature the licence enables. The company listed person-to-person transfers, open-banking connections, merchant payment tools, and card products as future candidates. They're on the shelf. The licence is in the drawer, waiting.
This is the reality of crypto exchanges moving into regulated financial services across Europe. You get the licence first, because regulators won't let you near customers until you do. The actual product comes later, once the company decides the market justifies building it. For now, Bybit's Austrian payments entity is licensed, quiet, and ready.
This article is informational and does not constitute financial or investment advice.
