SVG can be a sensible venue for crypto teams that want structure without theater—provided the product narrative, custody design, and banking story are real and consistent. If you need the formal route and deliverables in one place, see SVG VASP license.
Contents
What SVG actually rewards
Regulators and banking partners in SVG respond best to a narrow, credible v1. That means you say exactly what the platform will do on day one, list a short set of assets you can genuinely support, and describe how users travel from onboarding to withdrawal in language an accountant could repeat to their risk team. Promises don’t move files; evidence does. When your website copy, contracts, and internal policy snippets echo the same two-minute story, most clarifications vanish.
Are you in scope? Decide with flows, not labels
The label matters less than the path money and tokens take. If you onboard users, hold balances they rely on, execute transfers, or run an order book, you are in VASP territory and should plan for AML/CTF, sanctions screening, transaction monitoring, Travel Rule, and custody controls. If you are truly non-custodial—no keys, no routing or settlement you control—the burden can be lighter, but beware “hidden brokerage”: auto-swaps, routing, or batch settlement that effectively puts you in the flow of funds.
Design a v1 that passes without drama
Start with spot, not leverage. Keep the asset list tight and liquid. Write plain-English disclosures that explain spreads and fees. Defer complex listings, staking, and yield until the base is stable. Sequence ambition rather than squeezing everything into the first filing. It’s not “think small,” it’s “ship the core first, extend under governance.”
Custody that survives a second-order question
Spell out where keys live (HSM or audited multisig), who can approve movements (roles, not personal names), how withdrawals are gated (dual approvals, velocity or amount limits, allow-lists for higher-risk cohorts), and how reconciliations work (daily or weekly, who signs off, where artifacts are stored). If you rely on a third-party custodian or exchange, have vendor due diligence on file—contracts, assurance reports if available, and a short risk note that shows you actually read them. The goal isn’t glossy prose; it’s a story you can prove in two screenshots and a log extract.
Travel Rule: show it working
Pick an interoperable provider, wire your primary corridors, and save a handful of message traces: a normal success, a non-participant path, and your fallback behavior. Drop those traces into the evidence folder so both reviewers and banks see the same artifacts. “We’ll implement later” is how a four-question review becomes a month of email.
The banking conversation that lands on the first call
Every provider is solving the same puzzle: who owns and runs the business (with evidence), what exactly you do (in words that match your site and contracts), how funds move (corridors, volumes, counterparties, currencies), and how you keep illicit flows out while safeguarding client assets (segregation, reconciliations, sanctions/KYC, monitoring that actually fires). Put those answers on one page, add a simple flow diagram, and keep it consistent across your documents. When the narrative, artifacts, and contracts sing the same tune, onboarding feels routine.
Evidence beats adjectives: build a tiny, sharp bundle
Capture an onboarding sequence with a successful KYC outcome, a sanctions hit and how it’s resolved, one monitoring alert with analyst notes and timestamps, a withdrawal approval log, and a reconciliation extract tying balances to the ledger. Add three Travel Rule traces. Date everything. Store it in a tidy folder you can share in seconds. Those six or seven artifacts answer 80% of follow-ups without another paragraph of explanation.
Sequencing that keeps momentum
Begin with a whiteboard pass of onboarding → funding → action → withdrawal, marking where keys or funds can move and who approves. Draft AML/CTF, sanctions, monitoring, custody, and client disclosures straight from that diagram so policies describe the product you’re actually shipping. Appoint a Compliance Officer with a clean reporting line and minute both the appointment and policy approvals. File a complete pack, then answer clarifications with terse, evidence-backed replies—quote the relevant policy line, attach the log or screenshot, and stop. In parallel, open a fintech-friendly EMI/PSP so invoices and payroll don’t wait for the last email; add a bank or second EMI once the base model is stable.
Mini-case: trimming a busy prototype into a passable v1
A team arrived with spot, margin, staking, and a long tail of assets. Reviewers were skeptical; banking asked for everything. They cut leverage, trimmed listings to high-liquidity pairs, shipped dual-approval withdrawals with an exportable approval log, and wired two Travel Rule corridors with saved traces. They rewrote their site to match the filing. The authorization dialogue shrank to a handful of tight questions, and the bank moved from “not now” to “send the pack.” The moral: less scope, more proof.
Common blockers (and boring fixes)
Vague activity descriptions that contradict the UI, blurry KYC, missing UBO proof, custody promises your app can’t demonstrate, Travel Rule “later,” and contracts that don’t match the legal name in filings. Fixes are unsexy: write the two-minute narrative first and mirror it everywhere; triple-check IDs and addresses; only claim controls you can screenshot today; wire your main corridors before you submit; and run a quick document audit so names and addresses align across invoices, agreements, and forms.
Costs: think in buckets, not a headline number
Budget across three buckets: one-off setup (advisory, policy drafting, application prep), technology and security (KYC/KYB, Travel Rule, custody tooling, monitoring stack, pen-testing), and ongoing compliance (officer time, audits, reporting, training, renewals). Under-resource any one of these and you’ll pay with delays or provider refusals—both costlier than a modest buffer up front.
Closing notes from the operator’s side
Keep v1 honest and narrow, write policies from screenshots not imagination, and let artifacts do the talking. Teams that treat consistency as a feature—same words on the site, in contracts, and in filings—move faster and avoid awkward rewrites mid-review.
If you prefer a structured, end-to-end path—scoping, filings, and a bank-ready evidence pack handled by a team that’s done it before—LegalBison can run point while you ship product. Details at legalbison.com.