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That is the honest answer to the search that brings most people to this page, and it belongs before anything else. An authorisation to provide crypto-asset services is granted to a particular company on the basis of the people who own it, the people who run it, the capital behind it and the written procedures it works to. It is not a certificate attached to the shares. When control of an authorised firm changes hands the regulator assesses the incoming owners and managers, which is exactly why a licence cannot be handed over in a share transfer the way a company can. We supply Estonian companies. We do not supply authorisations, and we will not put one into a transaction.
What is left is still useful, and it is what the rest of this page sets out: the Estonian OÜ as the vehicle an application is made from, what the applicant has to bring to that application, and how long it really takes. Where a detail of the current Estonian requirements bears on your decision, it is confirmed with the regulator before anyone commits to anything.
Two things happened, and most of the pages offering ready-made licensed Estonian companies predate both.
The first was in 2022, when Estonia tightened its virtual currency service provider regime substantially. What had been a light registration became a real authorisation, assessed on capital, on management and staff genuinely present in Estonia, on a named anti-money-laundering officer with procedures behind them, and on audited accounts. A company advertised today on the strength of a licence issued before that change is describing a regime that no longer operates.
The second is MiCA, the EU regulation on markets in crypto-assets, which replaced the national regimes for crypto-asset service providers with a single EU authorisation that can be passported into the other member states, subject to transitional arrangements for firms that already held a national licence. An Estonian file that refers to the old national regime is not, for that reason, a MiCA authorised firm. The transitional arrangements are time limited, and whether any particular company sits inside them is a question of fact to be checked rather than assumed.
The same logic travels. Searches for a ready-made VASP company in Georgia, or a crypto company for sale in Slovenia, run into the same wall: the jurisdiction changes the name of the authorisation, not the fact that a regulator looks hard at who now owns and runs the firm.
An Estonian OÜ is quick, and it is the vehicle the application is made from. Formed new, it is registered in 1 to 2 working days where the founder holds e-Residency and signs with a Digi-ID, or in 1 to 3 weeks where signature runs through an Estonian consulate, an eIDAS qualified electronic signature or a volikiri to a Tallinn attorney. A ready made valmis OÜ transfers in 3 to 7 working days. The statutory minimum share capital has been EUR 0.01 since 2023, which tells you what company law asks for and nothing whatever about what a regulated applicant needs.
What matters more is that the company is built so that it does not have to be rebuilt when the application is filed. That means articles and activity codes matching the services actually planned, a management board the regulator will be reading about rather than a convenience appointment, the Estonian contact person the Commercial Code requires where the board sits outside Estonia, a real address, and bookkeeping from the first month. Beneficial owners go into the register held at the Äriregister, which stopped being freely searchable on 10 July 2026 and now opens to competent authorities, to obliged entities carrying out customer due diligence and to those who can justify a legitimate interest, in each case after logging in with an electronic identity.
As a matter of company law neither the members of an OÜ nor its board need Estonian or EU residency, which is the subject of company formation for non-residents, although a regulated applicant is a different question because the regulator looks for management genuinely in Estonia. Estonia also taxes distributed profit rather than profit as it arises, at 22 per cent when profit is distributed and nothing at all while it stays in the company, which is a large part of why crypto businesses looked at Estonia in the first place. The formation route is set out on company formation in Estonia, the entities we hold on ready-made shelf companies in Estonia, and the wider jurisdiction on our Estonia overview.
The requirements come in categories. The figures and thresholds attached to each depend on which crypto-asset services the firm intends to provide, custody, exchange and the operation of a trading platform among them, and they are confirmed with the regulator before anyone commits. In outline, an application stands or falls on the following.
None of it can be inherited from a company that has been sitting on a shelf. Issuing a token, as opposed to providing services with one, runs through a different part of the same regulation and is a separate conversation.
The company exists in days. The authorisation does not. Assembling the file is itself weeks of work, because most of it, the procedures, the business plan, the people, the auditor, does not exist until somebody writes it or hires it. The review then runs in months, and the clock stops every time a question goes unanswered. Plan the runway, the hiring and the banking in months, and treat a shorter answer from anybody as information about the seller rather than about the process.
Banking is its own project and often the slower half of it. Crypto is one of the activities individual banks restrict by policy even where it is perfectly lawful, so the account has to be matched to the activity rather than applied for cold. That is covered on bank accounts for Estonian companies.
Two routes are real. The first is to apply properly, from a clean Estonian company, which is the work described above. The second is to acquire a firm that genuinely operates, with its staff, its procedures, its history and its authorisation, and to treat the regulator’s assessment of the change of control as part of the transaction rather than as a formality afterwards. That is an acquisition with a regulatory approval in the middle of it, and it does not close in a week.
What does not work is the route most often sold: an old shell carrying a registration from the previous regime, transferred quietly in the hope that nobody looks. The exposure lands on the buyer, and the first serious counterparty, bank or supervisor to open the file is the one who finds it.
No. We do not sell licensed entities, and we would advise against buying one elsewhere. The authorisation belongs to the firm on the basis of its owners, its managers, its capital and its procedures, and a change of control is assessed by the regulator rather than simply recorded. What we do supply is the Estonian OÜ from which an application is made, either newly formed or transferred from the entities we hold.
It does not travel with the shares as a clean asset. The regulator assesses whoever is acquiring control, looking at what it looked at when the licence was granted: the people, the funding, the source of that funding, the management and the procedures. It can ask for more, it can object, and an authorisation can be withdrawn where the firm no longer meets the conditions it was granted on.
MiCA replaced the national regimes for crypto-asset service providers across the EU with a single authorisation that can be passported into the other member states, with transitional arrangements for firms that already held a national licence. The practical effect is that an Estonian file from the old regime does not by itself make a firm MiCA authorised. Which requirements apply to your services, and where the transition stands, is confirmed with the regulator before anyone commits.
Share capital and own funds tied to the services offered, a management presence in Estonia made up of people the regulator assesses individually, a named anti-money-laundering officer with a written framework behind them, audited financial information, and a business plan covering the services, the customers, the volumes, the technology and the safeguarding of client assets. The amounts attached to each depend on the services and are confirmed with the regulator.
The company takes days: 1 to 2 working days for an OÜ formed with e-Residency, 1 to 3 weeks without it, and 3 to 7 working days for a ready-made OÜ to transfer. The authorisation takes months, and the file itself takes weeks to assemble before any review starts. A timeline shorter than that is describing something other than a new authorisation.