This week
One company holds the licence, the liquidity or the infrastructure. Another holds the customer. That division of labour now runs through the Nordic crypto market in several forms, and this week's edition follows it.
Safello is piloting a way for companies with no crypto business of their own to let their customers buy crypto, under Safello's licence. Arctic Securities refers its clients to TÝR Markets, and StackXMe uses the same company as the bridge behind its savings app. And the crypto firms buy from each other — Coinmotion has picked K33 to handle its institutional orders.
The edition also has the thesis that names the model and sets out why the buyers hesitate.
It leaves one question for the person buying: whose customer you actually are. Sometimes the answer is the company whose app you opened. Sometimes it is a company in another country. And two supervisors will not say where the line runs.
Separately in this edition: NBX is putting stablecoins on a Visa card.
Morten
Founder & Editor, Kaupr
Crypto-as-a-service
A company with a licence provides the regulated services. Another company offers them to its own customers. Four stories on a model that has a name, a case study and two supervisors who will not say where its limits are.
Safello opens the way for other companies to offer crypto purchases
Safello is piloting a way for companies without a crypto business of their own to let their customers buy crypto inside a service they already use, under Safello's MiCA licence. The company calls it crypto checkout. The first test runs in Sweden, with one external partner and on bitcoin.se, which Safello owns.
Frank Schuil (left), chief executive of Safello, in conversation with Kaupr's Morten Myrstad on Kaupr TV in March.
The customer becomes a Safello customer along the way
A company using the solution connects through Safello's API, and needs neither its own licence nor in-house crypto expertise. A customer who wants to buy becomes a Safello customer through the company's know-your-customer process, and can then buy crypto assets and transfer them onwards in the same flow.
The point is the cost of winning customers
Safello points back to a widget it launched in 2018, which gave the fastest growth in the company's history. "In a saturated consumer market, we believe this can significantly lower our customer acquisition costs," says chief executive Frank Schuil. The pilot covers the Swedish market only, and is meant to produce data on volumes, conversion and customer behaviour before the company decides whether to broaden it.
Safello was founded in 2013 and has more than 426,900 users. The parent company has been listed on Nasdaq First North Growth Market since 2021.
Going deeper: the ambition behind it
Frank Schuil returned as chief executive in March with a stated ambition of making Safello the first choice for Swedish banks, asset managers and other institutions that want to enter crypto. He described the work as a puzzle he spends much of his time on, in dialogue with selected institutions: how to make it practicable for a bank to offer crypto services while staying inside MiCA and the institution's own risk and compliance requirements. Safello is the only company with a Swedish MiCA licence.
The model has a name, and a thesis behind it
Two KTH students, Nando Alexander Schmidt and Adam Michael, examined why crypto exchanges and brokers are moving from retail trading towards selling services to banks and institutions. Safello was the case company. The thesis draws on twelve interviews with employees at crypto exchanges, banks and family offices.
Nando Alexander Schmidt (left in the photo) and Adam Michael wrote the thesis at KTH in Stockholm.
Two buyer groups, not one
In the first model, the services sit inside a bank or other institution, which offers crypto onwards to its own customers. In the second, the institution is the end user itself — family offices, hedge funds and pension funds that want direct control over custody, trading and allocation.
Retail brokerage has a built-in weakness
Revenue from retail brokerage follows trading volume and market cycles, while legal work and compliance stay fixed. Services sold to banks and institutions give fixed fees and long-term agreements instead. The expertise being sold — compliance, custody, transaction monitoring — was built up because of regulation in the first place.
The responsibility cannot be outsourced
MiCA is described as the single most important factor behind the shift, but it does not remove the buyer's risk. Under EU law, responsibility for customer due diligence and anti-money laundering stays with the buyer regardless of how much of the work is handed over. That means the buyer needs enough internal expertise to oversee the provider.
Nobody wanted to be first
None of the banks or institutions in the study were ready to sign direct agreements. Most were waiting for others to move. Trust and local roots weighed more heavily than price, and aggressive sales approaches were counterproductive. Schmidt says the subject itself was an obstacle when he looked for interviewees: "As soon as they heard the word crypto, they got scared and backed off."
Two regulators will not say if crypto distribution needs a licence
Kaupr asked ESMA and Finansinspektionen whether a company that has been refused a MiCA licence can distribute crypto services on someone else's. Neither would give a yes or a no. Both answer that it depends on how the service works in practice.
The role decides, not the refusal
Finansinspektionen states that a refusal does not in itself prevent a company from acting as a distribution partner. What matters is what the company actually does in the arrangement.
K33 said this was coming
In June last year, K33 presented a bitcoin treasury strategy and raised MSEK 60. Chief executive Torbjørn Bull Jenssen described bitcoin on the balance sheet as a strategic enabler rather than a passive holding, and pointed to institutional partnerships as one of the revenue streams it would support.
He has said since then that K33 is working towards banks, neobanks and other Nordic exchange services, and that revenue from partnerships may over time exceed revenue from the brokerage's own trading volume.
Offering crypto without brokering it
Fund managers and savings apps that want to offer crypto without running a crypto business themselves. TÝR Markets and K33 supply what sits behind.
Arctic Securities refers its clients to TÝR Markets
From January this year, clients of Arctic Securities have had access to trading in bitcoin and selected digital assets through TÝR Markets. Arctic refers the client and receives a referral fee. TÝR handles trading, liquidity and infrastructure.
Filip Berg-Nielsen is chief executive of TÝR Markets and Volven.
The terms
TÝR Markets offers mid-price execution with zero spreads on orders up to NOK 100,000, and a standard commission of 0.35 per cent. "TÝR Markets is the first broker in Norway to enter the digital currency market," says chief executive Filip Berg-Nielsen.
StackByMe puts crypto trading in the savings app
The Norwegian investment and savings app uses TÝR Markets as a technical and liquidity bridge to international crypto markets, so that customers can trade directly in the app. Same terms: zero spreads up to NOK 100,000 and 0.35 per cent commission.
Pensum and K33 start with research and training
Pensum Asset Management and K33 are building solutions for exposure to bitcoin and digital assets for Norwegian investors, beginning with research, insights and training. The stated target group is wealthy individuals, family offices and institutional clients.
Crypto firms buying from each other
Five agreements between Nordic crypto companies, with four different reasons behind them: institutional execution, a missing licence, infrastructure for treasury holdings, and common ownership.
Coinmotion and K33 on institutional trading
Coinmotion has chosen K33 as its partner for institutional execution — the carrying out of larger buy and sell orders. Coinmotion keeps the client relationship and the platform. Both companies are authorised under MiCA.
Antti-Jussi Suominen (left), chief executive of Coinmotion, and Torbjørn Bull Jenssen, chief executive of K33.
MiCA is the precondition, says K33
"MiCA creates a common regulatory framework that makes these partnerships easier, allowing specialised providers to collaborate," says Bull Jenssen. Suominen describes it as each company continuing to do what it does best. According to K33, Coinmotion is the largest MiCA-licensed crypto broker in Finland and Sweden.
Goobit sells on a Finnish licence
Goobit was refused a MiCA licence in Sweden on 2 July and has appealed. Its savings product Futureproof launched anyway, with the regulated parts — order execution, custody and transfer — supplied by Finnish Kvarn Capital on its own authorisation, passported into Sweden.
Kvarn sells the arrangement as a product
Kvarn X Embedded is a finished product for partners across the EEA. The partner builds the interface; customers contract with Kvarn and become Kvarn's clients. Co-founder Joonas Järvinen says no regulated function is delegated, and that the model is neither an agency arrangement nor outsourcing.
How the Goobit arrangement works → · What Järvinen answered → · Goobit's chief executive on Futureproof →
GreenMerc drops its appeal and uses a sister company's licence
Ijort Invest, the parent company of Trijo, was refused a MiCA licence on 8 June. The appeal is being withdrawn, and the Swedish business continues under Finnish Northcrypto's licence. Northcrypto is in the same group. Trijo's customers are moved across without having to do anything.
K33 behind two treasury strategies
K33 has been the infrastructure partner for trading and custody of Goobit's own treasury holdings since August last year, alongside Goobit's self-custody. A month later the company took the same role for Ace Digital, the first Norwegian company with a pure bitcoin treasury strategy, ahead of its listing on Euronext Growth Oslo. Bull Jenssen sits on Ace Digital's advisory board.
Stablecoin cards
NBX signs deal with Tieto for stablecoin payment card
NBX has signed an agreement with Tieto Banktech for digital and physical payment cards, so that customers can spend stablecoins without first selling them, converting to kroner and moving the funds.
Stig Aleksander Kjos-Mathisen is chief executive of NBX.
Built around its own stablecoin
"What sets us apart is that we issue our own MiCA-compliant stablecoins. So this isn't a card sitting on top of a stablecoin — it's designed around it," says Kjos-Mathisen. The starting point is a prepaid Visa card, with Visa Flex supported later.
A bank provides access to the card networks
Tieto Banktech supplies card administration, transaction authorisation, PIN services, physical card production and fraud monitoring. IDT Finance, a regulated bank and principal member of Visa and Mastercard, acts as BIN sponsor. That is what lets a fintech run a card programme without its own banking licence or direct membership of the card schemes.
Credit and new markets further out
Kjos-Mathisen describes the card as a first step towards a single multicurrency card, with credit as a later layer. NBX is also looking at markets beyond Norway, including Germany and Poland.
New from Kaupr: Kaupr Events
Kaupr has launched Kaupr Events, a short newsletter about events in onchain finance: our own live events, curated picks from the Nordics and Baltics, and recordings of what you missed. It replaces our Luma calendar as the home for our events.
First up is How to invest in the tokenization trends, a joint event with Virtune on Wednesday 7 October, 11:00–12:30 CET, live online.
Virtune's CEO and co-founder Christopher Kock and Chief Sales Officer Andreas Severin discuss what is driving tokenization, which platforms the financial industry is building on, and how investors can gain exposure through regulated ETPs. Moderated by Morten Myrstad.
Coming up
Skatteverket on DAC8 reporting — Online, 15 October, 10:00–11:00. A webinar for companies running a trading venue or platform that enables crypto transactions, and which will have to file the new KU94 report: what to report, how and when, with questions taken in the chat. An earlier recorded webinar on preparing for DAC8 is linked from the same page. Free, in Swedish. Register →
Explore Onchain by Kaupr
Explore Onchain by Kaupr
Thanks for reading the tenth edition of Onchain Growth.
We're here to follow the industry and community driving onchain finance forward across the Nordics and Baltics.
Morten Founder & Editor, Kaupr