Passporting

Passporting is an arrangement inside a common regulatory area under which a firm authorised in one member state may offer its services across the others without obtaining a separate authorisation in each, relying instead on notification and on supervision by its home authority. Where such a regime exists and covers crypto services, three consequences follow for a customer. The firm you deal with may be supervised primarily by an authority in a country other than your own, so the rulebook that binds it is that state's implementation. Complaints, and any compensation arrangements, may run through the home state's machinery rather than yours, in a language and process you did not choose. And passporting exists only within the bloc that created it: a firm serving you from outside that bloc is not passported into anywhere, and is either separately authorised where you are or operating without authorisation.