Bitcoin Money

• EU exchange Bitcoin Central to operate as a PSP

  Paymium, operator of Bitcoin-Central exchange, will be operating that exchange following the regulations in the EU that apply to a Payment Services Provider (PSP).  This was announced in a post on the BitcoinTalk forum by David Francois, Paymium’s CTO.

  Bitcoin-Central, one of only a few Bitcoin exchanges that have been in business for more than two years, currently operates a BTC/EUR exchange market and their newerBTC/GBP market [update: Bitcoin-Central will be closing their BTC/GBP market and offering only BTC/EUR exchange].  Bitcoin-Central will not hold customer EUR balances, and instead the funds will be held by Credit Mutuel, a major French bank.  This service is made possible through Paymium’s partnership with Aqoba, a French PSP.

  
  

  There was no go-live date (as a PSP) given but the announcement referred to features this change will bring, such as each account being assigned an IBAN number, as arriving “in a few months”.

  A reply in the forum thread for the announcement was a question regarding who would be eligible to hold an account.  The response given by Mr. Francois was that there would be no limitations regarding the citizenship of clients though he did admit the company would be experiencing “a learning curve”.  This assertion of universal coverage was met with skepticism as Americans are generally excluded from being able to obtain an account with a foreign financial institution due to the resulting reporting requirements doing so would entail, thanks to FATCA.

  Neither Paymium’s partner Aquoba nor Credit Mutuel has provided additional information thus far however a press release from Aquoba is expected.  Last week French newspaper Le Monde published an article on Bitcoin in which Paymium’s COO, Pierre Noizat, was interviewed no mention of this development was included.