Patricia Technologies, Africa’s leading Crypto exchange company has been granted a Money Services Business (MSB) license by the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FinTRAC). This license allows Patricia to legally and optimally function in her capacity as a non-bank financial institution in Canada, to deal in currency exchange services, money transfer services, as well as virtual currency transactions.
As of March 2021, in a public notice by the CSA and IIROC (Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization), Canada has asserted its position in regulating cryptocurrency activity, and the government has thus far ensured that all cryptocurrency exchanges and companies comply with the regulations. Since the use of virtual currency is not prohibited in Canada, but it is not considered legal tender, every cryptocurrency exchange must register with the Financial Transaction Analysis Center of Canada (FinTRAC), as well as have the securities legislation applicable to its cryptocurrency transactions.
The MSB License enables Patricia to carry out financial transactions such as
- Currency exchange ( this allows Patricia to exchange crypto for crypto, crypto for FIAT, or vice versa for a commission)
- Money transferring (Patricia can transfer funds and execute cross-border transfers for individuals and businesses alike)
- Wallet service (Patricia can now represent cryptocurrency wallets to store cryptocurrency, and create encrypted client keys, as well as to store them).
Commenting, CEO and Founder, Fejiro Hanu Agbodje, said, “This is big news for our customers, partners, as well as stakeholders. It is an important milestone in our 5 years growth story. Driving global crypto adoption is in line with our goal of making crypto easy across the continent.”
Commenting on the news, Patricia’s Global Head of Strategy and Expansion, Rotimi Ogunwede, said, “We’re thrilled to have been granted the Canadian MSB license after fulfilling all of the regulatory requirements. The application process was rigorous and included a concise review of our operations as a business. With more responsibilities now, we will work closely with both local and international regulators to ensure we meet and exceed their expectations.”
Reacting to the news, Rachael Akalia, Brand Manager, said, “The license avails us room to offer more services and explore more crypto use cases for our ecosystem. We can now offer more value to our customers while taking more control of our value chain to enable an improved crypto exchange experience for our customers in Africa and across the world.”
For the past year, Patricia has worked hard on this, and once again, they have broken through another threshold.
