FCA opens crypto authorization window; existing firms get Feb. 28, 2027 continuity deadline

The FCA has opened its crypto authorization window ahead of the 2027 regime, and the one date attached to it so far is a continuity cutoff. Existing firms that apply by Feb. 28, 2027 can keep taking new business while their applications are still pending when the regime starts on Oct. 25, according to The Defiant, which reported the window. Strip it to the mechanism and the provision is about a book of business rather than a permission: what it protects is the ability to keep writing UK crypto clients across the start of the regime, and only for a firm whose file is still open when that start arrives.

What carries the protection is the pendency of an application rather than its approval, which points to the likelihood that not every February filing will have been resolved by October; if decisions were expected across the board by then, the provision would have nothing to do. Read that way, it is a hedge against a gap in the book, letting a firm that filed on time keep serving clients while the regulator works through its queue.

What the account leaves open matters as much as what it states. It does not say whether the FCA will keep accepting applications after Feb. 28, how long a decision takes, or what an existing firm faces if it lets the date pass, and it uses the term existing firms without defining which firms qualify. The practical read for a UK-facing business is narrower than the phrase authorization window implies: a date by which to file, and no described consequence for missing it.

So the calendar item is Feb. 28, 2027, and the filing is the part of the sequence a firm controls. The queue behind it and the speed of review are not described in the coverage, and the continuity provision is worth only as much as they deliver. Whether Feb. 28 is the end of intake or just the last day on which an existing firm can preserve continuity is left open, and that answer decides whether a firm not yet serving UK crypto clients has any date to work with at all.