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Crypto news May 13: Latvia grants Paybis dual license

Latvijas Banka grants Paybis MiCA CASP and PSD2 payment institution status at once; hot April PPI at 6% pushes Bitcoin below $80,000; ETF inflows continue for a seventh week; 48 days to the MiCA deadline

Toms Ābeltiņš

14 May 20268 min read

The key event in the Baltic region on the previous day (May 13, Wednesday): Latvijas Banka announces a dual license for SIA Paybis Europe - MiCA CASP and PSD2 payment institution status at once, the first such case in Latvia and the country's third MiCA CASP license holder. In global markets, a hot April PPI at 6% pushes Bitcoin below $80,000 after Tuesday's 3.8% CPI surprise. US spot Bitcoin ETFs extend their net inflow streak to seven weeks with a $358 million daily inflow. 48 days remain until the July 1 MiCA deadline and 75 days until the July 28 ESMA competence guidelines.

Main story on May 13: Latvijas Banka issues Paybis a double license - MiCA CASP and PSD2 payment institution status

On Wednesday, May 13, 2026, Latvijas Banka publicly announced that at the previous day's Supervisory Committee meeting - May 12 - it had decided to grant SIA Paybis Europe two parallel licenses: a crypto-asset service provider (CASP) license under the EU Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), and a payment institution license under the PSD2 directive. This is the first time in Latvia that a single company has received authorization under both regimes simultaneously, and Paybis becomes the third company in Latvia to hold a full MiCA CASP license, after BlockBen SIA (December 3, 2025) and Nexdesk SIA (December 2025).

The MiCA CASP license allows Paybis to provide custody and administration of clients' crypto-assets, exchange of crypto-assets for cash and for other crypto-assets, order execution on behalf of clients, crypto-asset advice, and crypto-asset transfer services. The PSD2 payment institution license, in turn, grants the right to execute payments and transfers to payment accounts. According to Latvijas Banka's statement, the combined regime allows Paybis to cover the entire EU and EEA via the cross-border passporting mechanism.

Paybis strategy: B2B infrastructure and stablecoins

According to comments published by Cointelegraph, Paybis co-founder and CEO Innokenty Isers said the dual licensing allows the company to build "a broad, forward-looking offering, including work with stablecoins." Paybis co-founder and commercial director Konstantin Vasilenko explained that the company is targeting the business-client segment directly with a white-label crypto infrastructure stack - on/off-ramp solutions, buy/sell/swap, payment acceptance, and stablecoin payouts - all through a single API, so that businesses can offer crypto services to their own customers without building their own regulatory regime.

Vasilenko stressed that the combination of MiCA CASP authorization and a PSD2 payment institution license is critical to executing this model, as it allows crypto-asset services to be linked directly to regulated payment channels. Paybis was founded in 2014, supports 90 crypto-assets and serves roughly 7 million users in 180 countries; outside the EU it holds money services business (MSB) licenses in the US and Canada.

Market context: hot April PPI data knocks Bitcoin below $80,000

That same day, May 13, the dominant theme in global markets was another macro-surprise reaction - this time from the US producer price index (PPI). According to data published by Yahoo Finance, Fortune and CoinDesk, Bitcoin's Wednesday opening price was $80,473.98 - 1.5% below Tuesday's open. During the day the price briefly recovered to $80,611 around 7:08 ET, but after the PPI release it fell back near $80,304 around 9:15 ET and closed the US trading day below the $80,000 level. Ethereum opened at $2,274.41 - 2.8% below Tuesday's open - and held roughly in the $2,287-2,300 range.

Market movement was driven mainly by April PPI data: producer prices rose 1.4% month over month - nearly three times the 0.5% consensus forecast - while annual PPI inflation accelerated to 6%. This is an unwelcome follow-up to the previous day's hot CPI reading (3.8% y/y), and the combined signal pushed market participants to further scale back expectations for Fed rate cuts in 2026. According to a summary from aimsfx.com, of 390 tracked coins, 321 were in negative territory and only 69 positive - a clearly risk-off market signature.

Structurally: ETF inflows continue for a seventh straight week

Despite the price move, institutional ETF dynamics remained supportive. According to 24/7 Wall St. and Farside Investors data, US spot Bitcoin ETFs overall saw net inflows for a seventh consecutive week, with a $358.1 million single-day inflow on May 13, led largely by BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) with a $269.3 million single-day inflow - one of the strongest readings of recent weeks. Over the past six weeks, cumulative Bitcoin ETF inflows exceed $3.4 billion, structurally pointing to a revival of institutional demand after the slow activity at the start of the year.

The persistence of this flow signal under price pressure from the macro side matters: it shows the institutional base is holding up the market, even as short-term price direction remains driven by macro factors (CPI/PPI data, Fed policy expectations). The $80,000 level remains the key psychological support, while the $82,000-85,000 range remains the nearest resistance, already rejected multiple times this week.

MiCA transition countdown: 48 days to July 1

The countdown to the end of the MiCA transition period on July 1, 2026 continues: on the day this article was published (May 14), 48 days remain until the deadline. Paybis's licensing reinforces Latvijas Banka's positioning as one of the most active MiCA hubs in the EU. Latvijas Banka's statement also noted that in 2025 the regulator issued eight fintech licenses in total, while in the first four and a half months of 2026 it has already issued seven.

Latvijas Banka actively encourages new applicants to use pre-licensing consultations with regulator experts, during which guidance on applicable regulation is provided and an initial compliance assessment is carried out. The official recommendation for market participants remains unchanged: before continuing to use a service provider, check its authorization status in the ESMA Interim MiCA Register or with the relevant national regulator - Latvijas Banka, Lietuvos bankas, Finantsinspektsioon, Finanssivalvonta, or Finanstilsynet. If a license status is not publicly confirmed within 48 days, the official recommendation is to move client positions in time - either to another licensed CASP or to a self-custody solution.

ESMA competence guidelines: 75 days to application

A second significant element of the MiCA regime - the ESMA guidelines on knowledge and competence criteria for CASP staff (ESMA35-24871704-2922) - will start to apply on July 28, 2026, which from this article's publication date is 75 days away. The guidelines apply to all licensed CASPs, not only new applicants, and require a formalized staff training regime, documented competence-assessment procedures, and a proper audit trail. With its dual license, Paybis automatically falls into this requirement category as well.

Lithuania, Estonia, Finland: contrasts across the region

Lithuania currently remains the clearest example of contraction in the Baltics. According to Bank of Lithuania data, only three CASP licenses had been issued by the start of 2026, against 324 registered crypto companies at the end of 2024. Lithuania's repositioning - shifting from an "easy-access" licensing hub to a "quality, not quantity" jurisdiction - is combined with an active enforcement regime from the Financial Crime Investigation Service (FCIS) and the Bank of Lithuania since January 1, 2026. The warning list still includes the LWEX trading platform, and a March 2026 warning against Binance UAB for providing unauthorized investment services.

In Estonia, the transition deadline is approaching without automatic VASP-to-CASP conversion: every company wishing to keep operating needs a full application to Finantsinspektsioon, with a capital requirement of EUR 100,000-250,000 depending on the service category. The regulator has publicly warned that applications submitted too close to the deadline will most likely not receive a decision in time and will need to include a wind-down plan.

Finland already completed its transition period on June 30, 2025, and applies the full CASP regime. Coinmotion, Tesseract and Bittimaatti are Finanssivalvonta-licensed service providers; Coinmotion officially opened its platform to Swedish customers at the start of 2026, creating direct cross-border Nordic competition. According to a study sponsored by K33 Research, roughly 31% of Finnish crypto-asset owners use Coinmotion for their holdings.

Norway, Sweden, Denmark: ETP channels and a Finanstilsynet transition extension

In Norway, Finanstilsynet used the maximum window allowed under MiCA Article 143(3) this April and extended the national transition period to June 30, 2026. The first MiCA-licensed CASP in Norway remains AK Jensen Norway AS (since February 2), while the largest Norwegian crypto exchanges - Firi, NBX and others - remain in the application-processing queue, with a typical processing time of 6-9 months. This specifically means that even the extended June 30 deadline is not guaranteed to be met for the largest players without active regulator involvement. Firi remains the largest Nordic crypto exchange by user count and turnover - more than 400,000 verified users and roughly EUR 1 billion in annual trading volume; Firi is active in Norway and Denmark, with an announced market expansion into Sweden in the second half of the year.

In Sweden, the main institutional gateway remains Nasdaq Stockholm, with Bitwise's set of seven SEK-denominated crypto ETPs (listing began January 14) and Nordea's Bitcoin-tracking ETP. Arctic Securities clients have had access to Bitcoin and select digital-asset trading via TÝR Markets since January 2026. This structure makes Sweden one of the few EU markets where regulated retail and institutional access formats exist side by side.

Global exchanges' EU positioning continues

Kraken is officially active in all 30 EEA countries under a MiCA license issued by the Central Bank of Ireland since August 2025. Coinbase, with a MiCA license from Luxembourg's CSSF, can offer its full product range across all 27 EU member states. Bybit EU, via Austria's FMA, continues to provide regulated services in 29 EEA countries. Binance currently operates in the EU market through its Lithuanian entity, while formally applying for a MiCA license via a newly established Greek subsidiary, Binary Greece; the Greek regulator HCMC continues to evaluate the application. OKX maintains Spot Margin trading for EEA clients, including Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland.

Summary for market participants

The main Baltic-region news of May 13 - Paybis's dual license in Latvia - structurally confirms two trends: first, Latvia is cementing its position as one of the most practically active MiCA jurisdictions in the EU, and second, the B2B crypto infrastructure segment (white-label on/off-ramp, stablecoin payouts) is becoming a more visible category of regulated services, one that in practice requires both a MiCA CASP license and a PSD2 payment institution license to execute. Globally, macro factors - the hot April CPI at 3.8% and the even hotter April PPI at 6% - keep risk-off sentiment dominant in the short term, but the seven-week streak of spot ETF inflows structurally points to resilient institutional demand.

The medium-term focus in the region remains the July 1 MiCA deadline (48 days) and the July 28 application of ESMA competence guidelines (75 days). Recommendations for market participants remain unchanged: confirm that the chosen service provider is in the ESMA Interim MiCA Register or already holds a full CASP license; follow the official registers of national regulators; and for licensed CASPs, prepare in time for the July 28 rollout of ESMA's knowledge and competence guidelines with a documented training and competence-assessment procedure.

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