What is the Turkish KVHS/CASP licence?
With the 2024 amendment to the Capital Markets Law (No. 6362), Türkiye brought crypto asset service providers (kripto varlık hizmet sağlayıcıları, KVHS) — trading platforms, custodians and other defined service providers — under Capital Markets Board (SPK) authorisation and supervision. Operating without authorisation is now a criminal matter, and existing platforms passed through a transition process on the Board’s published lists.
What the regime demands
The framework and the Board’s secondary regulations set the expected pillars: minimum capital and shareholder/manager fit-and-proper standards; corporate governance and internal control, audit and risk functions; segregation and custody of customer assets, with custody concentrated in authorised custodians and platform self-custody restricted; technology and information-security requirements (with TÜBİTAK-linked technical criteria); listing standards for the assets a platform makes available; and full MASAK AML obligations — customer identification, suspicious-transaction reporting and travel-rule transfer information.
Strategy notes for founders and investors
Three practical readings. The licence is a moat: compliance capacity now prices market entry, and diligence on any Turkish crypto business starts with its status on the SPK lists. Custody architecture drives the business model — who holds keys, and through which authorised custodian, determines both regulatory posture and product latitude. And the regime is deliberately MiCA-adjacent but not identical: an EU MiCA authorisation does not passport into Türkiye, so cross-border groups run parallel files.
Does the licence cover token issuance?
The regime targets service providers; issuance is addressed separately and partially — most token-sale questions still resolve through general capital-markets characterisation, which is where legal analysis earns its fee.
Can foreign platforms serve Turkish users without a licence?
Targeting Türkiye without authorisation is precisely what the regime prohibits; the practical tests are Turkish-language interfaces, TRY rails, local marketing and agents.
Related: MASAK.