Goldblum advises Coinbridge AG on Swiss licensing and its Binance partnership

Goldblum and Partners acted as lead counsel to Coinbridge AG, a Swiss crypto-payment provider, on its authorisation as a regulated financial intermediary in Switzerland and on a technology and liquidity partnership with Binance.

The client

Coinbridge lets online merchants accept cryptocurrency and settle in Swiss francs. It sits in the checkout next to TWINT, PayPal, Stripe and Klarna, takes the crypto, converts it in real time and pays the merchant in CHF, so the merchant never holds a wallet, manages a private key or carries the exchange-rate risk. It integrates with Magento, WooCommerce and custom platforms over an API.

The regulatory mandate

Accepting crypto and converting it to fiat for third parties is financial-intermediary activity under the Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA). The Firm assessed the model against AMLA and FINMA practice and built the framework needed for admission to the VQF: the Verein zur Qualitätssicherung von Finanzdienstleistungen, a FINMA-recognised self-regulatory organisation. The work ran from corporate structuring through to a granted membership:

• incorporating Coinbridge AG with the substance an SRO expects: Swiss-resident directors and a registered office;
• preparing and filing the full VQF membership application with its annexes;
• drafting an AML/CFT and KYC framework built for payment processing: customer and merchant due diligence, risk-based transaction monitoring, enhanced due diligence and suspicious-activity reporting;
• writing the internal directives, organisational regulations and compliance manuals to VQF standard, and structuring the AML officer function;
• liaising with VQF through the review, answering its supplementary questions to the point of admission.

Coinbridge obtained VQF membership and the authorisation to operate as a regulated financial intermediary under Swiss law.

The Binance partnership

The Firm was sole counsel on the technology and commercial partnership with Binance — structuring and negotiating the cooperation and integration agreement, the API and service-level terms, the liquidity and settlement arrangements and the data-processing provisions, and aligning the Swiss regulatory perimeter with Binance's global compliance standards through to signing.

Marcus Altenburg, Managing Partner, led the mandate. Goldblum and Partners is a Swiss corporate, regulatory and fiduciary firm with offices in Zurich and Zug, advising crypto and fintech businesses on SRO membership, FINMA matters and AML.