Romania Puts A New Crypto-Friendly Electronic Money Law Into Force

The European country of Romania is in the spotlight for creating a regulatory process that targets all cryptocurrencies and digital currencies. What started as a draft of the Emergency Ordinance published by the Romanian Ministry of Finance is now a detailed plan with all the conditions and requirements that must be met by every issuer of money in Romania.

As the draft bill notes, the issuer must have 350,000 Euros worth of share capital as a minimum. On top of that, every one of the members must be individually vetted and approved by the National Bank of Romania (BNR). The vetting measures will include full verification of individual tax payment history and personal legal records, as a local report noted.

In order to be recognized as an institution that deals with electronic money, every organization in Romania must be authorized to do so under Romanian law. In other words, the specific organization must register and be supervised by the BNR which also provides regulatory authorization for issuing electronic money.

As outlined in the draft, ‘electronic money’ refers to a “monetary value stored electronically, including magnetic, representing a claim on the issuer issued on receipt of funds for the purpose of performing payment transactions and which is accepted by a person other than the issuer of electronic money.”

The draft also stated that all authorizations for electronic money will be valid 12 months from the date of issue. If the company doesn’t start with operations during that time, all authorizations will be voided.

In a nutshell, this is a big step for crypto companies and cryptocurrencies in Romania – mostly because regulators want to have complete control over all money-issuance activities within the country.