LocalBitcoins Opens For Business In Finland After Registering As A Virtual Currency Provider

LocalBitcoins gains Finnish Financial Service Authority (FIN-FSA) license as a certified virtual currency provider that allows the peer-to-peer exchange to run its business in the country legally.

To acquire the license, LocalBitcoins had to make changes to its identification and verification procedures in order to set KYC/AML compliance to standard with the Finnish regulations.

The Finnish regulators also checked on the institutions ability to safeguard their clients’ digital assets as well as the overall performance of the top management at the firm. Despite the challenges, the CEO of LocalBitcoins, Sebastian Sonntag, is ecstatic on the Finnish market potential in P2P Bitcoin trading. Speaking on the announcement of their license, he said,

“Finland is a well-functioning society, which holds trust and confidence at high levels. At the same time, the controls in the financial sector are of particularly high quality and the position of the clients is well protected.”

Verification and identification changes on LocalBitcoins

Ever since the company started its explosive expansion globally, it has taken measures to appease and be in line with the regulators of many federations and governments including the latest KYC/AML requirements to high Tier traders on the platform.

At the end of October, the P2P BTC platform sent out an email warning users to verify their accounts and add relevant info before Nov. 1 in order to be able to deposit, trade and withdraw their BTC from the platform. The email read,

“After the 1st of November accounts that exceed their Tier transaction and trade volume limits and have not yet provided verification for the required Tier will be suspended from trading and the withdrawal of BTC will be blocked accordingly until the identification requirements are met.”

In a nutshell…

LocalBitcoins is growing at an exemplary rate with the Chinese Yuan trades reaching an all-time high on November 2. Also economic stressed areas are witnessing a huge market adoption of the platform with Venezuela and Argentina seeing massive growth in the number of trades on the P2P trading platform.