Fintech Regulation
5 articles
Does Your Agentic-Payments Startup Need a Money Transmitter License?
When an AI agent moves money on a user's behalf, the licensing question turns on one thing regulators have asked for decades: do you control the funds? If your platform holds, pools, or controls customer money, you are likely a money transmitter — federally and in most states — no matter how autonomous the agent is.
Does Your AI Agent Need a Financial License? A Decision Guide
Whether an AI agent needs a financial license does not turn on the fact that it is AI. It turns on what the agent does with money or securities — and more than one regime can apply at once. An agent that executes securities trades answers to the SEC; one that trades futures, swaps, or leveraged retail crypto answers to the CFTC; one that moves customer money answers to FinCEN and the states. This is the decision guide that routes your agent to the right regulator — often more than one.
Does Your AI Trading Agent Need to Register as a Broker-Dealer?
When an AI agent executes trades for other people, the 1934 Act asks one thing: for whose account? An agent that effects transactions for someone else's account is a broker and generally must register; one that trades its own account may be an exempt 'trader,' and one that matches other users' orders can become an exchange. Autonomy does not change which hat you wear.
Does Your AI Trading Agent Need to Register with the CFTC?
The CFTC asks two questions the SEC's framework does not: what does the agent trade, and what job does it do with it? Futures, swaps, and leveraged retail crypto pull an autonomous trading agent into the Commodity Exchange Act — and depending on whether it advises, pools capital, or takes orders, it can owe registration as a CTA, CPO, FCM, or introducing broker. The CFTC's Ooki DAO enforcement action signals that being autonomous does not dissolve the duty.
Does Your AI Trading Agent Need to Register as an Investment Adviser?
When an AI agent recommends securities to clients for a fee, the Investment Advisers Act asks one thing: what is the advice, not who — or what — delivers it. An autonomous agent that gives personalized investment advice for compensation is judged by the same three-part test as a human adviser, and no line of code creates an exemption.
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