01Which MiCA class do I need, and how much capital?＋
Class 1 covers order execution, reception and transmission, placing, transfer services, advice and portfolio management, and requires €50,000 in own funds — one of the lowest thresholds in the EU. Class 2 adds exchange of crypto-assets for funds or for other crypto-assets, plus custody and administration for clients, at €125,000. Class 3 is the trading-platform licence: every Class 1 and Class 2 service plus operating a trading platform, at €150,000 (Annex IV of Regulation (EU) 2023/1114). The capital is a reserve, not a fee: it stays with the company. We scope the right class before you commit, so you are not reclassified mid-application.
02How long does the Latvian process actually take?＋
A complete application is processed within roughly 6 months of acceptance, and the realistic end-to-end figure is about 12 months once entity setup, document preparation and regulator dialogue are counted. What moves that number is the quality of the file: an application that is internally consistent survives the completeness review instead of restarting the clock with every information request.
03What does the first year cost?＋
Our services start from €65,000 for Class 1, the state application fee is €4,500 one-time, entity formation and registered office from €1,500, and the €50,000 share-capital reserve sits with the company. Running costs start from about €1,000/month for an outsourced MLRO and €600/month for office and administration; the DORA documentation package, where required, adds €15,000. The calculator above estimates your combination, and we issue a fixed-fee proposal after the initial assessment.
04What operational substance does the regulator require?＋
A registered office in Riga, management that genuinely takes decisions in Latvia, and key persons — directors, the MLRO, compliance staff — who meet fit-and-proper requirements. A letterbox company does not pass. Riga has a deep pool of qualified AML officers, directors and compliance professionals, and we facilitate the outsourced roles needed to demonstrate that substance.
05Can the whole process run in English?＋
Yes. Application review and the dialogue with the regulator can be conducted entirely in English, which removes a large amount of friction for international teams — no parallel translation track, and no meaning lost between the business and the supervisor.
06Does a Latvian licence let me operate across the EU?＋
Yes — that is the point of MiCA. A Latvian CASP licence carries the right to notify and passport into all 27 member states: one licence, one primary regulatory relationship, and no separate authorisation in each market you enter.
07Do I need DORA documentation as well?＋
If your setup falls under DORA, ICT risk management, incident reporting and third-party arrangements have to be documented as part of the licensing file — the regulator reads them together with the rest of the application. We prepare that package (from €15,000) so ICT resilience is written into the application rather than bolted on after authorisation.
08What happens after the licence is granted?＋
Supervision starts. We stay on as the operational layer: outsourced MLRO, ongoing AML monitoring, DORA compliance, regulatory reporting and annual filings — so the entity keeps meeting the standard it was licensed against while you scale the business.
09Why Latvia rather than another EU jurisdiction?＋
Speed and cost at the same regulatory quality. The regulator works to a defined application checklist and assessment criteria, so you know what a complete file looks like before you submit; the state fee is €4,500, an office in Riga starts from about €500/month, and qualified compliance staff are available locally at rates well below Western Europe. The licence you receive is the same MiCA licence, with the same passporting rights.
10Do I need to be a Latvian or EU resident to own the company?＋
Ownership is open to foreign shareholders — the SIA can be held from outside Latvia and outside the EU. What matters to the regulator is transparency and quality: the beneficial ownership chain must be disclosed and traceable, and the people who own and run the company must pass fit-and-proper assessment. Management substance in Latvia is a separate requirement from ownership.
11Can I start operating before the licence is issued?＋
You can build — incorporate the SIA, hire, contract technology, run testing, prepare onboarding — but you cannot provide crypto-asset services to clients until the CASP licence is granted. Everything built during that window should be built to the standard described in the application, because the regulator assesses the business it is about to authorise, not a prototype that will be rewritten afterwards.
12What most often delays a CASP application?＋
Incomplete or internally inconsistent files. A business plan that describes one model while the AML framework assumes another, unclear ownership, thin substance, or an ICT section that does not match the technology actually in use — each of those generates an information request, and every request adds weeks. The fix is structural: one coherent package where every document tells the same story about the same business.
13Can I move an existing crypto business to Latvia?＋
Yes, and it is a common reason firms come to us — particularly operators leaving jurisdictions where the MiCA transition stalled. We map your existing services onto the right Latvian licence class, rebuild the compliance and governance layer to the regulator's expectations, and set up the Latvian entity and substance in parallel, so the migration is a controlled hand-over rather than a pause in the business.
Republic of Latvia
CASP · 
