Which AIFC Licences Are Live, and What They Permit
A note on reading the register rather than the press release, and on the difference between a permission and a service.
Yerlan Nurpeis · 1 min
The register is public. Almost nobody reads it, which is why announcements circulate for years after they stopped being true.
What the register shows
The entity, the authority, the permissions held, any conditions, and the status. Current, suspended or withdrawn.
Four fields that answer most questions people ask me.
What it does not show
Whether the service is actually running. A permission is a right to do something, not evidence that it is being done.
I have seen more than one entity with live permissions and nothing operating behind them. That is not improper. It is simply a different fact from the one people infer.
The distinction worth keeping
Authorised to do X. Currently doing X. Doing X at a quality worth using.
Three separate questions. The register answers the first, observation answers the second, and the third takes longer.
Reading a permission
Permissions are activity-specific. Authorisation to operate a trading facility is not authorisation to hold client assets, and the two are frequently assumed together.
Where a platform holds one and performs both, that is worth asking about.
Conditions
Often where the interesting information sits: restrictions on client types, on asset classes, or on scale. A condition is a supervisor saying something specific.
What I check before writing about any platform
Entity name against the register, permissions against what the site advertises, and status against the date. Two minutes.
What remains unverified
Whether the services advertised correspond to live infrastructure. I can check the register; I cannot check a back end.
Where I have not tested something myself, I say so.
The practical use
Before depositing anywhere, read the entry. A platform whose permissions are on the register can be checked in the same way wherever it is licensed.
Collect & Exchange names its framework, and somewhere the licence covers what the platform actually does is the specific thing to confirm rather than assume.
Written from what could be checked on the date above. Where a service was announced but not observed working, the note says so. Nothing here is financial advice.