Weekly recap · 28 September - 4 October 2026 · Regulation
Some weeks in financial regulation never make headlines. No landmark law passes, no minister stands at a podium. The work moves one floor down, to supervisors, central banks and payment schemes, the people who turn political intent into thresholds, deadlines and app updates. This was one of those weeks, on almost every continent.
Europe: MiCA grows up, and asks for more
Less than two years after it took full effect, the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation is being reopened by its own supervisor. On 30 September, ESMA published its response to the Commission's MiCA review consultation (ESMA). It wants stricter rules for influencer marketing, clearer disclosure for staking and lending, powers to block fraudulent websites and freeze crypto-assets in cases of suspected market abuse or terrorist financing, clearer criteria for genuine DeFi, and the authority to issue binding opinions on token classification.
Two details stand out. ESMA wants to stop regulated firms from offering services linked to stablecoins that do not meet MiCA requirements, a pointed signal about which dollar tokens Europe will tolerate. And it called for a framework for tokenised securities and on-chain settlement (ESMA). The crypto rulebook is being asked to become a capital-markets rulebook. Europe's central banks, as we reported last week, used the same review to push back on MiCA's deposit rule for stablecoin reserves.
The ECB, meanwhile, kept laying track for the digital euro before its legislation exists. Companies can apply for the pilot until 9 November, e-commerce merchants until 27 October (ECB). In July, the ECB selected 36 payment service providers for a 12-month pilot due to start in the second half of 2027 (ECB). It aims to be ready for a first issuance in 2029, assuming the legislation is adopted in 2026 (ECB). That is the retail track; on the wholesale side, Pontes went live on 21 September. The same ECB summary notes a detail worth keeping: on 24 September, the Governing Council approved an assessment of linking its TIPS instant-payment platform to Brazil's Pix (ECB).
United Kingdom: the door opens
On 30 September, the FCA opened its authorisation gateway for cryptoasset firms. Applications run until 28 February 2027, ahead of the regime's start on 25 October 2027 (FCA). Unglamorous paperwork, but also the moment years of policy debate become a list of firms that have, or have not, committed to the UK.
HM Treasury's consultation on modernising payment services regulation closes at 11:59 pm on 6 October (GOV.UK). It proposes substantial reforms to the Payment Services Regulations and Electronic Money Regulations to prepare for tokenised payments and agentic AI (Simmons & Simmons). Anyone who has not yet responded has two days left.
United States: when Congress stalls, the agencies write
The CLARITY Act, the long-negotiated crypto market-structure bill, failed a Senate procedural vote 49 to 50 on 15 September, well short of the 60 needed (Senate floor record). This week showed what fills the vacuum.
Treasury drew a line at $10 billion. On 30 September, it published its first binding rule under the GENIUS Act, an interim final rule effective on publication. Issuers with no more than $10 billion outstanding can opt for state oversight if their state's regime is certified as "substantially similar"; comments are open until 30 November (Federal Register). Under the statute, an issuer that crosses the threshold has 360 days to move to the federal framework unless it obtains a waiver (Congress.gov). Seven federal agencies missed the July rulemaking deadline (Yahoo Finance).
The SEC rewrote custody. On 1 October, it proposed letting investment advisers and funds hold crypto with state trust companies, or self-custody in certain circumstances, with 60 days for comment after Federal Register publication. CNBC places the move in the context of regulators building a crypto rulebook "under their existing authority" after CLARITY stalled (CNBC).
The banks went to court. On 2 October, the Independent Community Bankers of America sued the OCC over national trust charters for crypto firms. "Congress did not create the national trust charter as a side door into the banking system for crypto firms seeking the credibility of a federal bank charter," said ICBA chief executive Rebeca Romero Rainey. Coinbase, Circle, Crypto.com and World Liberty Financial are among the applicants; the OCC does not comment on litigation (CoinDesk).
And the states started cooperating. On 1 October, New York's DFS and Wyoming's Division of Banking signed a memorandum of understanding to share examination data and work towards joint examinations of crypto firms (NYDFS).
Taken together: American crypto regulation is not stalled. It is being assembled piecemeal, by different agencies under different statutes, with litigation as the quality check.
Asia: pilots, not proclamations
On 29 September, Japan's Financial Services Agency approved the fourth project in its Payment Innovation Project programme: stablecoin settlement for international trade (FSA). TradeWaltz, NTT Data, Japan's three megabanks and Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking will trigger a stablecoin payment once an exporter's shipping documents are uploaded and a bank agrees to buy the receivable. The trial links to the megabanks' joint yen stablecoin (Cryptopolitan), with which the banks aim to conduct actual commercial transactions in the fiscal year ending March 2027 (Mizuho). Not retail, not trading, but trade finance, one of banking's most paper-heavy corners: that is where Japan wants programmable money to prove itself first.
In Singapore, MAS's consultation on a statutory stablecoin regime under the Payment Services Act closes on 16 October (MAS), including a licence for issuers of "MAS-regulated stablecoins" (Rajah & Tann).
South America: Pix removes another limit
Since 1 October, Brazil's central bank no longer caps contactless Pix payments at R$500 per transaction (Folha de S.Paulo). Customers agree limits with their bank under the same framework as Pix key and QR-code transfers; daily limits remain (ClearingPost). A parameter change, but also another step in Pix's move from transfer rail to point-of-sale rival to cards. When the ECB starts studying a link to Pix, as it did a week earlier (ECB), that is not a courtesy. It is recognition.
Africa: sovereignty versus timelines
Nigeria's payments industry pushed back on the central bank's directive that payment transaction data must be stored in Nigeria by 1 January 2027. Executives called six months too short, warned of outages and security gaps, and asked for a phased roadmap distinguishing data that must sit locally from hybrid-cloud workloads. UniCloud Africa estimates the extra capacity needed at 14 to 30 megawatts, against roughly 20 megawatts available in commercial data centres (BusinessDay). European readers will recognise the digital-sovereignty debate, here compressed into a deadline and a power budget.
In South Africa, Absa launched institutional digital-asset custody on 2 October after regulatory approval and is reported to be the first bank in Africa to do so. It supports Bitcoin, Ether, XRP and USDC (Nairametrics).
Australia: the surcharge disappears
Since 1 October, Australian businesses can no longer surcharge Visa, Mastercard or eftpos card payments. The Reserve Bank, which announced its conclusions on 31 March (RBA), did not ban surcharges itself. It lifted its own prohibition on "no-surcharge" rules, and the three designated networks then introduced them. American Express, UnionPay and PayPal, which the RBA does not formally regulate, followed voluntarily, and lower interchange caps for domestic cards apply from the same date (RBA). Merchants may still price in acceptance costs, as long as the displayed price is the total price (ACCC).
What connects it all
A review response, a consultation deadline, an interim rule, a lawsuit, a pilot, a parameter change, a surcharge ban. In isolation, unrelated. Together, they show where fintech regulation now happens. The big legislative moments, MiCA, the GENIUS Act, Hong Kong's Stablecoins Ordinance in force since 1 August 2025 (Hong Kong government), are largely behind us. What remains is implementation: thresholds that decide who supervises whom, gateways that decide who enters a market, pilots that decide which use cases earn trust, limits that decide how money moves at the till.
Three questions for next week:
- Who supervises the big stablecoins? Washington drew a line at $10 billion, ESMA wants non-compliant tokens out of regulated services, and Singapore and Japan are building their own perimeters. Global issuers will have to choose jurisdictions carefully.
- Will instant payments rival card networks? Uncapped contactless Pix, a possible TIPS-Pix link and a surcharge-free Australia all put card economics under pressure from several directions.
- Can regulators set timelines infrastructure can meet? Nigeria's localisation deadline, America's missed GENIUS deadlines and a digital euro still waiting for its law suggest the hardest part of regulation is not writing it, but sequencing it.
None of this will trend. All of it will matter.
Dates to watch
- 6 October - UK: HM Treasury payment services consultation closes
- 16 October - Singapore: MAS stablecoin consultation closes
- 27 October - EU: digital euro pilot deadline for e-commerce merchants
- 30 October - Australia: card networks and large acquirers start publishing fee data
- 9 November - EU: digital euro pilot deadline for companies and organisations
- 30 November - US: comments close on Treasury's GENIUS Act interim final rule
- 1 January 2027 - Nigeria: payment data-localisation deadline
- 28 February 2027 - UK: FCA crypto authorisation window closes
This article was researched and written with AI assistance for FinTech Weekly. All facts are linked to their sources in the text.
