Working back from the deadline: a VASP licensing timeline for Kenya, Brazil and the UK
Three dates, three different legal characters
Kenya, Brazil and the United Kingdom each have a 2026 date attached to virtual asset licensing. They are not the same kind of date. Treating them as interchangeable — three cut-offs to diarise — is the most common scheduling error we see, because only one of the three behaves the way firms assume.
- Kenya, 4 November 2026. The date comes from section 47 of the Virtual Asset Service Providers Act, 2025 (Act No. 20 of 2025). The Virtual Asset Service Providers Regulations, 2026 — Legal Notice No. 134 of 2026, Kenya Gazette Supplement No. 185, Legislative Supplement No. 103, published 22 July 2026 and made on 3 July 2026 — run to 151 regulations and six schedules. Read end to end, they contain no transitional provision, no savings clause and no deemed-licensing regulation.
- Brazil, 30 October 2026. Article 9 caput of Instrução Normativa BCB nº 704 sets the Phase 1 filing date for providers already operating when the framework entered into force on 2 February 2026 (Resolução BCB nº 519, art. 28).
- United Kingdom, 30 September 2026 to 28 February 2027. These dates appear nowhere in SI 2026/102. They come from an FCA direction made under regulation 52 of that instrument and published on 20 February 2026.
The UK date does not close the gateway
This is worth stating plainly because the shorthand is everywhere. Regulation 52(5) of SI 2026/102 says, in terms, that a direction under paragraph (1) “does not prevent applications for a relevant cryptoasset permission being made outside the relevant application period”. Nothing closes on 28 February 2027. What ends on that date is eligibility for the regulation 53 saving — the provision that lets a firm keep operating on its existing basis while its application is determined.
The FCA says the same thing on its own page describing how the gateway will operate, and adds that it “will not expedite our assessment of a firm’s application to compensate for its late submission”. So a late applicant is not shut out; it is unprotected and un-prioritised, which in practice is bad enough. The accurate phrasing is that the window for the saving closes, not that the gateway closes.
One related caution. Summaries of the fallback regime in regulation 56 usually render it as “no new customers”. The regulation is drafted differently: regulation 56(3)(b) limits the exemption to what is necessary for the performance of a pre-existing contract, and regulation 56(4) defines a pre-existing contract by reference to a “relevant day”. The operative test is contract vintage, not customer novelty. If regulation 56 matters to your plan, read regulation 56 rather than a summary of it.
What actually sits on the critical path
In each regime the binding constraint is a document that cannot be produced quickly, and it is rarely the application form.
- Brazil: item VIII of the Phase 1 list in article 9 of IN BCB 704 requires financial statements for the last three financial years, audited by an independent auditor registered with the CVM. A firm that has never been audited cannot close that gap in the weeks before a filing date. Capital must also be subscribed and paid up in cash, with integralisation immediately following subscription — a commitment letter or parent guarantee is not capital, and capital is a Phase 1 gate.
- Kenya: regulation 6(2)(f) of LN 134 requires written operational policies and lists nine of them, and the Third Schedule business plan asks for a named risk register as an application deliverable rather than an annex to be supplied later. Capital sits in the Fifth Schedule, with the multi-activity rule in regulation 85(6) deciding what a two-permission firm actually has to hold.
- United Kingdom: the FCA published its application form information document on 8 July 2026. Pre-application support service requests opened on 11 May 2026 with meetings from July 2026. The application fee has not been published; PS26/14 defers it to the September 2026 Handbook Notice, and CP26/17 is the paper to track.
The dates that belong on the plan after the deadline
A licensing schedule that stops at the filing date is only half a schedule.
- In Brazil, Phase 2 (article 10 of IN BCB 704) must be filed within 60 days of a favourable Phase 1 decision, extendable by up to 60 further days at BCB discretion on a justified request. The reasonable assurance report introduced by IN BCB 739 lands in Phase 2 and in the new-entrant route, not in the 30 October Phase 1 set.
- In the UK, regulation 1(2) of SI 2026/102 sets full commencement at 25 October 2027, and regulation 1(3) has kept parts of the instrument in force since 21 days after it was made, which is why applications can be made and determined seven months before the gateway opens.
- The UK longstop is widely published as 25 October 2029. Regulations 53(3) and 55(9) say “at the end of the period of 2 years beginning with the full commencement day”. “Beginning with” includes 25 October 2027, so the period ends at the end of 24 October 2029. It is one day, but it is a wind-down date firms put in board packs.
Building the schedule backwards
Take the filing date, subtract the lead time on the slowest document — audit, capital injection, or a policy set that needs board approval — and the resulting date is when the project actually had to start. Then add the post-filing dates above, because supervisory relationships begin at authorisation rather than ending there. Where a date is set by regulator direction rather than by the instrument, note that in the plan: directions can be revisited in a way that primary dates cannot. As at the date of this article we have found no extension or amendment to any of the three dates above.
The checklist behind this article
We publish a readiness checklist for each of the three regimes. Each item is cited to a rule, regulation or article number, every figure is marked as coming from the instrument or from reporting of it, and questions the instruments leave open are marked as open rather than guessed: Kenya, USD 79, Brazil, USD 79, United Kingdom, USD 149. Updated editions are free as each position develops.
If your critical path is clear and you simply need the document list, the checklist for your market is enough on its own. If you are in more than one of these regimes at once, or you cannot tell which filing date binds first, the 48-hour gap check looks at your specific situation and comes back with the sequence.