Euro balances on a crypto exchange: what to watch after the ESMA answer on MiCA article 70

When you transfer euros to a crypto exchange and leave them there until you buy, that money sits somewhere. Not with you, not in your wallet, but in an account somebody else runs. Which account that may be, and in whose name it has to be held, is what the European Securities and Markets Authority, ESMA, spelled out in a new answer on October 16, 2026. The short version: a payment service provider without a banking licence is a staging post for no more than one business day, and the account at the bank has to be in the exchange's name, not in the name of the provider in between.

What ESMA answered on MiCA article 70 on October 16

ESMA published five new questions and answers that day. Four concern crowdfunding platforms and the calculation of the active account under the EMIR 3 reform, and are of no relevance to retail investors. The fifth, Q&A 2949, is addressed to crypto asset service providers, and therefore to every exchange where you hold a euro balance.

A market participant had asked two things. First: may an authorised crypto asset service provider park client funds temporarily in an account at a payment service provider without a banking licence, such as an e-money institution or a payment institution? Second: may the funds stay there longer if the account does sit at a genuine bank but is held in the name of that payment service provider and kept technically separate from its other accounts?

ESMA answers the first question with a qualified yes and the second with a plain no. The answer is dated October 6, 2026 and was published ten days later.

MiCA article 70: the duty that holding client funds triggers

A crypto asset service provider, CASP in the rulebook, is any firm that commercially trades, exchanges, holds or arranges crypto assets in the EU and needs a MiCA authorisation for it. Every exchange you can legally buy through in Germany falls under it.

Article 70 of the MiCA regulation governs what such a firm has to do with its clients' money. Paragraph 2 requires arrangements that safeguard clients' ownership rights in their funds and prevent those funds being used for the firm's own account. Paragraph 3 then sets the actual duty: the money belongs in an account at a credit institution or a central bank.

The contrast with the crypto side matters. Different paragraphs of the same rulebook apply to your coins. Article 70 covers only the euros you have deposited and not yet invested, and the euros sitting in your exchange account after a sale. That money is precisely what raises the hardest questions if an exchange becomes insolvent. How supervision of these firms will be organised from 2027 is set out in our overview of ESMA's direct supervision of crypto providers.

The one-day limit: when the money has to sit at a credit institution

The first part of ESMA's answer is a permission on a short leash. When a crypto asset service provider receives client money, whether directly from the client or from a third party on the client's behalf, it may hold that money temporarily in a payment account at a non-bank payment service provider. Throughout that time it must continue to meet the safeguarding requirements of article 70 paragraph 2.

Then comes the deadline. By the end of the business day following receipt of the money at the latest, the provider has to place it in an account at a credit institution or a central bank. That is not a new rule, it is what article 70 paragraph 3 says. What is new is the clarification that a stop at an e-money institution neither extends nor replaces that deadline.

In practice that means: transfer on a Monday and your money should be in a bank account by the close of Tuesday at the latest. What happens at weekends and on public holidays depends on what counts as a business day in the country concerned. On this reading, a transfer on a Friday evening can be in transit until Monday evening without any rule being broken.

Why an account in the payment provider's name is not enough

The second part of the answer is the tougher one. ESMA writes that the account at the bank or central bank must be opened and maintained directly in the name of the crypto asset service provider, or in line with whichever legal regime on asset segregation applies.

An account held in the name of a non-bank payment service provider does not satisfy article 70 paragraph 3 on this reading. The authority's reasoning is a legal one, but it has tangible consequences: in that construction the crypto asset service provider would merely hold a claim against the payment service provider, instead of being the account holder vis-a-vis the credit institution itself. And according to ESMA that applies expressly even where the account was set up for that single crypto asset service provider and kept technically separate from every other account.

A claim is an entitlement against a firm. An account balance is an entitlement against the bank that holds the account. If another firm sits between you and the bank and fails, you have to join the queue in its insolvency proceedings. Keeping that chain of staging posts short is exactly what the rule is for.

How quickly that turns practical was shown by the case of the broker Trive, which we reported on in September: Trive froze client funds, and holders of crypto CFDs could not reach their money. The more staging posts lie between your money and a bank account, the longer it takes to establish who owns what.

E-money institution, payment institution, credit institution: the three terms apart

ESMA's answer hangs on a distinction almost nobody draws in everyday life. It is worth a look.

• A credit institution is what people colloquially call a bank. It holds a banking licence, may take deposits from the public and grant loans, and it belongs to a statutory deposit guarantee scheme.
• An e-money institution issues electronic money and runs payment accounts. It may not take deposits and does not lend out client money. Instead it safeguards client funds through trust accounts or insurance.
• A payment institution processes payments without issuing e-money itself. Here too there is no banking licence and no classic deposit guarantee.

All three are supervised, and all three are legitimate business models. But only the first is a permissible permanent home for your euro balance at a crypto exchange under article 70 paragraph 3. Under the new answer, the other two may only be the staging post of at most one business day.

Deposit guarantee: your euro balance on the exchange is not a bank balance

Here is the point where many investors assume something the rule does not give them. The fact that your money ends up in an account at a bank does not make you a client of that bank. Your counterparty remains the exchange.

The statutory deposit guarantee in the EU covers deposits up to 100,000 euros per client and institution. Whether and how it applies where an account is held in a provider's name and pools many clients' funds depends on the specific legal structure of that account and on national law. ESMA does not address this in Q&A 2949 and answers a narrower question: who has to be the account holder.

That is precisely why the answer matters to you. The more directly the path runs between your money and a credit institution, the fewer parties can fail in between. If you would rather not leave a euro balance sitting on a trading platform permanently, withdraw it after buying or selling, and hold the coins yourself. Which devices are suitable for that we have gathered in our hardware wallet comparison.

Interest on client funds: what Q&A 2486 awards the client

The new answer does not stand alone. It builds on an older one that shows how tightly the supervisor reads article 70 as a whole. Q&A 2486, last updated on February 18, 2026 and answered by the European Commission, dealt with interest.

The question was whether a crypto asset service provider may earn interest on client funds it places in a savings account at a credit institution. The answer is no. On that reading, CASPs are obliged to place client funds in risk-free savings accounts and may not earn interest from them for themselves. The duty serves the protection of clients alone. Any interest arising from compliance with article 70 paragraph 3 has to be passed on to the client, because the income comes from the client's money.

That differs from what some platforms do in other jurisdictions, where interest income on client deposits is a revenue line of its own. In the EU, on the Commission's reading, that income belongs to the client. Whether and how exchanges implement it is in their price and service lists, and it is a question worth asking.

What a Q&A does legally and what it does not change

Some perspective belongs here so the reach of these answers is not overstated. ESMA puts a note in front of its own Q&As: these answers explain provisions that already stand in applicable law. They do not extend rights and obligations, they introduce no additional requirements, and they are meant only to help authorities and firms with application. Only the Court of Justice of the European Union can interpret Union law bindingly.

In practice it carries weight all the same. National supervisors such as Germany's BaFin take their bearings from these answers when they examine business models. A crypto asset service provider that permanently routes client funds through an account in a payment provider's name has to expect questions after this answer.

ESMA has also declared digital finance and innovation a supervisory priority for 2027, so clarifications of this kind are unlikely to be the last. Another, considerably harder deadline is already running: for stablecoins without MiCA authorisation the authority has given platforms until January 8, 2027, which we set out in our piece on ESMA's stablecoin deadline.

Your exchange's documents: where the custodian for euros is named

You cannot look up where your money sits tonight. But you can read what your exchange commits to. Three places are worth it.

The terms and conditions almost always have a section on client funds or the holding of monies. That is where it says whether the funds sit in trust or pooled accounts and who the account holder is. The risk disclosures say whether the provider claims a deposit guarantee for euro balances, and if it makes no such claim, that is the answer. The price and service list tells you whether interest on balances is credited.

If one of those statements is missing or stays unclear, that is not an accusation but a reason to ask the provider. A list of the platforms that can show a MiCA authorisation in the EU is in our overview of regulated crypto exchanges. Anyone comparing anyway should look at that section of the documents as closely as at the trading fee.

Euro balances: after one business day the bank has to hold them

ESMA's answer changes nothing about your balance today. What it does sharpen is the question you can put to your exchange, and it hands you three steps.

1. Read up on who the account holder is. Find the section on client funds in your platform's terms and check whether a credit institution is named there and in whose name the account runs. Whether your platform holds an EU authorisation at all is shown in our overview of regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Keep the euro balance small. What you do not intend to invest does not have to sit on the trading platform. A current account at a bank is covered by the deposit guarantee; an exchange balance is legally something else.
3. Separate trading from storage. Coins you intend to hold for longer do not belong on an exchange permanently. Which hardware is up to the job and what it costs is in the hardware wallet comparison.

(As of October 19, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)