FINTRAC MSB registration, and how to verify one

A FINTRAC money services business registration is what permits a firm to deal in foreign exchange, transfer money, or deal in virtual currency in Canada. If you are assessing a Canadian counterparty, it is the first thing to establish and the easiest thing to check.

It is also routinely misdescribed, including by firms that hold one.

It is a registration, not a licence

Canada’s regime is registration-based. A business carrying on a listed money services activity must register with FINTRAC and then meet the obligations that follow from registering. FINTRAC does not examine your business model and approve it the way a licensing authority does.

That difference is not pedantry. A licence implies a regulator looked at what you intend to do and permitted it. A registration means you told the supervisor you are doing it and accepted the duties that attach. Both are real regulatory status; they are not the same status.

So when a provider tells you it is “licensed by FINTRAC”, you have learned something — not about its permissions, but about how carefully it describes itself. We describe ours as registrations throughout this site for exactly that reason.

There is no certificate. The registry is the evidence.

FINTRAC does not issue licences or certificates of registration. There is no document to request, and if a counterparty produces a “FINTRAC certificate” during due diligence, that is a finding rather than a reassurance.

What exists instead is the public MSB Registry, and it is a better artefact than a certificate would be:

• you check it yourself, without asking the firm for anything;
• it shows current status, not status as at whenever a PDF was generated;
• it shows the specific activities the firm is registered for;
• it shows expiry, and any cessation or revocation.

Search it by registration number or legal name. If a firm cannot give you its number, that in itself tells you something.

What the registration actually covers

A firm registers for the specific activities it carries on, which commonly include:

• foreign exchange dealing;
• money transferring;
• issuing or redeeming money orders, traveller’s cheques and similar instruments;
• dealing in virtual currency;
• payment service provision, in the respects the regime captures.

The practical check is not “are they registered” but “are they registered for the thing I am asking them to do”. A firm registered for foreign exchange dealing and not for virtual currency is not a counterparty for stablecoin settlement, however genuine its registration.

The six programme elements

Registration brings a compliance programme obligation. FINTRAC sets out six elements — and the number matters, because the widely repeated version of this list has five:

1. An appointed compliance officer, with the authority to do the job rather than the title alone.
2. Written policies and procedures, kept current.
3. A risk assessment of the business — customers, products, delivery channels, geography.
4. Ongoing training for anyone whose work touches the obligations.
5. A two-year effectiveness review, tested rather than asserted.
6. A written plan for applying the other five and keeping them current — the element most often dropped from summaries, and the one that turns a set of documents into a programme.

Alongside that sit reporting obligations, record-keeping, and the ministerial directives in force. There are currently three; the Russia directive is the one most commonly missed in counterparty checklists.

The penalties moved, and the old numbers are still circulating

Administrative monetary penalty maxima rose substantially. Since 26 March 2026 the ceiling for prescribed violations is CAD 4 million for individuals and CAD 20 million for entities. Contravening a FINTRAC compliance order carries a higher ceiling still: up to the greater of CAD 30 million or 3% of gross global revenue for an entity.

Figures of CAD 100,000 and CAD 500,000 are still widely quoted in provider content and compliance summaries. They are out of date. If a counterparty’s risk assessment still cites them, its Canadian analysis has not been refreshed since March.

How to check a Canadian counterparty, in order

1. Get the registration number, not a logo or a claim.
2. Look it up on the public MSB Registry yourself.
3. Check the activities listed against what you actually need them to do.
4. Check status and expiry, and that there is no cessation or revocation.
5. Ask which ministerial directives they apply — and how they track changes to the list in force.
6. Note the language they use about their own status. Registration or licence? The firms that inflate the easy, checkable claim tend not to be more careful about the hard ones.

KwiikPay’s registration

KwiikPay is a trading name of KWP Finance Limited, registered with FINTRAC as a money services business including dealing in virtual currency, registration number C100000942. Separately, it is registered with the Bank of Canada as a payment service provider under the Retail Payment Activities Act.

Both are registrations. Neither is a licence, and we do not describe them as one.

Verify C100000942 on the public MSB Registry rather than taking this page’s word for it — that is what the registry is for, and a provider that would rather you did not is telling you something.