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Nodu Digital wins two licences from Latvijas Banka

On 8 July 2026 Latvijas Banka issued two licences to Nodu Digital SIA - a crypto-asset service provider (MiCA CASP) licence and a payment institution licence. It is the tenth company with a crypto-asset licence in Latvia and the third with a dual CASP + payment institution licence. Nodu builds stablecoin payment infrastructure for banks, PSPs and fintechs; the founders come from the Latvian fintech Crassula. We review the company, its owners, finances and competition.

Toms Ābeltiņš

9 July 20268 min read

Nodu Digital wins two licences from Latvijas Banka

On 8 July 2026 the Supervision Committee of Latvijas Banka issued two licences to Nodu Digital SIA: a MiCA crypto-asset service provider (CASP) licence - for transferring crypto-assets on behalf of clients and exchanging them for funds - and a payment institution licence for money remittance. It is the tenth company with a crypto-asset licence in Latvia and the third with a dual CASP + PI licence (after Paybis and Backpack EU). Nodu (nodu.fi) builds B2B stablecoin payment infrastructure (USDC/USDT payin, payouts in 40+ currencies across 60+ countries) and positions itself as Europe's answer to Zerohash and Bridge. The founders are the ex-Crassula team; in December 2025 they raised a EUR 1.25M pre-seed from Digital Space Ventures. A fact-based review.

What happened

On 8 July 2026 the Supervision Committee of Latvijas Banka (the Bank of Latvia) issued two licences to Nodu Digital SIA: a crypto-asset service provider (MiCA CASP) licence and a payment institution licence. The central bank announced the decision publicly on 9 July.

The CASP licence allows Nodu Digital to provide two MiCA services - transfer of crypto-assets on behalf of clients and exchange of crypto-assets for funds. The payment institution licence additionally permits money remittance.

According to Latvijas Banka, Nodu Digital is the tenth company to receive a crypto-asset licence in Latvia. It is also the third Latvian company to obtain both a MiCA CASP and a payment institution licence at the same time - after Paybis Europe (May 2026) and Trek Technologies / Backpack EU (late May 2026).

What Nodu is

Nodu (nodu.fi) builds stablecoin payment infrastructure for businesses - it is not a retail crypto exchange. The product consists of three building blocks:

Payin - accepting fiat money and converting it into stablecoins (USDC/USDT);
Payout - converting stablecoins back into fiat and paying out in 40+ currencies across more than 60 countries;
Cross-border transfers - "fiat in your currency in, fiat in theirs out", with the stablecoin as an invisible intermediary.

The company supports USDC and USDT on several blockchains (Ethereum, Base, Tron) and accepts pay-ins in seven fiat currencies (USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, CAD, AUD, CHF). According to the company's own figures, most payouts settle in roughly 60 seconds and no markup is added to FX rates - clients can add their own margin. These are company-provided figures that cannot yet be independently verified.

The group also includes Nodu Canada Inc., a Canadian-registered money services business (FINTRAC MSB registration); a Bank of Canada PSP registration is reported as pending. Nodu publicly positions itself as Europe's answer to the US players Zerohash and Bridge, with an "EU-first" MiCA compliance approach.

Owners, board and team

According to Latvian company registry data (Lursoft):

Nodu Digital SIA was registered on 11 July 2025, with its legal address at Aspazijas bulvaris 20, Riga (reg. No. 40203662782).
100% of the shares are held by Nodu Global SIA (reg. No. 40203638206, Riga).
The board has four members with individual representation rights: Daria Dubinina (Dubynina), Kristaps Gintauts, Vladislavs Nikolajevs and Aleksandrs Novozenovs.
The beneficial owners are Aleksandrs Novozenovs (Latvian resident and citizen) and Daria Dubinina (Ukrainian resident and citizen).

The three founders - Alex Novozhenov (CEO), Vladislav Nikolayev (CTO) and Daria Dubinina - previously built Crassula, a Latvian-born white-label banking/fintech platform that processed payments for more than 150 clients over a decade. That track record in regulated payments infrastructure is one of the main arguments investors cite for Nodu.

Financial indicators

Nodu Digital SIA is a young company, so full financial statements are not yet available - the first annual report (for 2025) has not yet been filed. What is known from public sources:

Paid-in share capital: EUR 145,800 (registered on 27 May 2026) - well above the SIA minimum and consistent with payment institution capital requirements for money remittance;
Pre-seed funding: EUR 1.25 million (~USD 1.45 million), announced on 19 December 2025; the round was led by Luxembourg-based Digital Space Ventures, an early investor in Revolut and PaySend;
no tax debts, insolvency or liquidation records;
revenue and profit figures are not yet available.

In the funding announcement, Digital Space Ventures managing partner Andrei Popov predicted that by 2030 most major currencies will also exist in stablecoin form, with banks, PSPs and fintechs looking for reliable partners to bridge fiat and stablecoin ecosystems.

What the two licences cover

The licence combination mirrors Nodu's business model - a payment flow in which crypto-assets and fiat money are two sides of one transaction:

the MiCA CASP licence covers the crypto side: transferring stablecoins on behalf of clients and exchanging them for fiat;
the payment institution licence covers the fiat side: money remittance.

Once authorised in one EU country, a crypto-asset service provider may provide services across the EU under the cross-border notification mechanism - so Nodu's Latvian licences potentially open the entire EEA market.

Target audience

Nodu's clients are businesses, not individuals:

banks and financial institutions that want to offer stablecoin payments;
payment service providers (PSPs) and money transfer operators (MTOs);
fintechs, neobanks, crypto exchanges and wallets that need on/off-ramps;
B2B payroll and marketplace platforms with cross-border payouts.

Nodu offers no direct service to retail users - it is infrastructure on which others build their products.

Competitive position

Globally, Nodu competes in the stablecoin infrastructure segment, where the main players are Zerohash and Bridge (owned by Stripe) in the US, plus BVNK and - at the institutional layer - Ripple, which received a full MiCA CASP licence in Luxembourg on 6 July. Nodu's differentiation strategy is "EU-first" regulation and a focus on regulated institutions rather than crypto-native platforms.

In Latvia, Nodu Digital becomes the tenth crypto-asset licence holder. Publicly known Latvian MiCA CASP licence recipients so far include BlockBen, Neverless, Nexdesk, Paybis Europe, Trek Technologies (Backpack EU), AlphaRoute, Hodleris and Bleap, plus TWINO Investments as an investment firm authorised to provide crypto-asset services. Direct competition is limited, though: most Latvian CASPs are retail exchanges or custody services, while Nodu operates in the B2B payments infrastructure niche - its closest local analogues are Hodleris (H-Finance) in the B2B segment and Paybis in stablecoin flows.

With this licence, Latvijas Banka strengthens its position as an active MiCA licensing hub in the Baltics - ten crypto licences is more than the MiCA CASP licences issued in Estonia or Lithuania individually over this period.

MiCA context and the EU passport

MiCA has applied in full since late 2024, and on 1 July 2026 the transition period ended in most EU countries. The market is now splitting between licensed players and those that have left the EU market or failed to obtain authorisation. Nodu's licence comes a week after that watershed - for new players without a licence the EU market is no longer accessible, so full authorisation has become the ticket to entry rather than a formality.

Latvijas Banka also offers pre-licensing consultations to prospective applicants - something the regulator highlights as part of its strategy to attract fintech companies to the Latvian jurisdiction.

Impact on the Baltic and Nordic market

Retail users in the Baltics and Nordics are not directly affected - Nodu offers nothing to individuals. The impact is expected at the institutional and fintech layer:

regional banks, PSPs and fintechs gain another EU-regulated stablecoin infrastructure supplier with local roots;
for the Latvian fintech ecosystem it is a signal that Riga can retain and license an internationally scaled team (the Crassula track record, Canadian operations, Luxembourg investors);
the regulated adoption of stablecoin payments in traditional settlement flows in the region is likely to accelerate - the same process signalled at the institutional level by Ripple's MiCA licence.

Still to be confirmed

At the time of writing, the following are not yet publicly available:

Nodu Digital SIA's entry in the ESMA Interim MiCA Register with an LEI code and the full list of approved services (the register is usually updated within 1-2 weeks of a national regulator's decision);
the precise group structure between Nodu Global SIA and Nodu Canada Inc.;
Nodu's revenue, client numbers and processed payment volumes;
Nodu Digital SIA's first annual report.

Norriwire will update this article and the CASP catalogue as soon as the ESMA register entry appears.

Next checkpoints

ESMA Interim MiCA Register - the Nodu Digital entry with LEI and service list;
Latvijas Banka's supervision register - the official entry with the licence number;
Nodu's product opening to EU clients - whether and when active operations under the Latvian licence begin;
the next Latvian CASP licences - whether Latvia keeps issuing new licences at a similar pace.

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