How much money does it cost to get all US Money Transmitter Licenses? Here is a short quick video that gives you the answer.
Also, here is a complete list of all US State Regulators that issue a money transmitter license.
Transcript:
Hello my name is Faisal Khan. I am a banking and a payment consultant. A question that I got into the mail recently is how much do U.S. money transmitter licenses cost. Well it’s a very…multiple choice kind of an answer.
So, licenses are in 54 territories. There are the 50 U.S. states. There is the Federal Territory of Washington D.C. and there are three U.S. territories of Virgin Islands, the Puerto Rico, and one more I forgot. So, in each case, you have to apply for a license. Each U.S. regulator has their own fees for applying for a license. I’ve included a link below that contains a list of all the 50 regulators and the territories in the comments section and you can go from there. But basically there is a fee for everyone and someone has a fee of a thousand dollars, 500 dollars, two thousand dollars, five thousand dollars. Those fees are pretty much basic. But every state has a minimum paid up capital requirement so some states have a paid up capital requirement of ten thousand dollars, some have twenty five thousand dollars, some have two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, some have five hundred thousand dollars. It depends.
A state like New York has a minimum paid up capital requirement of 500 thousand dollars. A state like Michigan has I think twenty five thousand dollars or maybe twenty thousand dollars. So it depends on each state that you apply for. Then there are many additional costs that you have to cater for. For example you have to provide surety bonds. Surety bonds are depending on your business model can vary in premium from 1 percent to 3 percent. So a state may require up to 2 million dollars in surety bonding per state. So let’s say you get about 20 30 million dollars worth of surety bonding, you will have to pay a premium. If you, let’s say, take 30 million dollars worth of surety bonding pay 1 percent premium, you can do the math.
Then there are ancillary costs like fingerprinting, you’ll have to pay for it, you have to pay for the cards and everything else. The audit fees. There might be a FISMA audit and there might be a GAAP audit, there might be a transaction management system audit etc. All these you will have to pay for. All in all, it takes between one point one and one point five million dollars to apply for the money transmitter licenses for all 50 states. Some states you get very much immediately: Idaho, Alabama, you know Iowa etc. These licenses can come pretty much very quickly between three and four months. Other states take longer between six and nine months. And states like California, Texas and New York can go well over a year. But all in all, between a million and a million one point one million to 1.5 million is what you need to have, including paid-up capital including surety bonding to apply for licenses. The actual fees itself that you’re looking at paying there is that is going to be non-refundable is going to be anywhere between a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to 200 thousand dollars. This does not include legal fees and to the best of my knowledge, this is again to the best of my knowledge, you have to apply for the licenses yourself. The compliance report and everything else you will have to pay for but you have to apply for the license; no one else can apply on your behalf. So, that’s something to keep in mind.
I hope I was able to answer the question, if you have any more, feel free to ask in the comments section below and I’ll be happy to answer them. Till next time, have a good one.
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This page was last updated on September 1, 2022.
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