What is a VASP?
A VASP, or Virtual Asset Service Provider, is the term the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) coined for any business that exchanges, transfers, or holds virtual assets for others. FATF introduced it in 2019 to bring crypto firms inside anti-money-laundering rules. Many countries wrote “VASP registration” regimes into national law off the back of that guidance, so before MiCA the EU had a patchwork: Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, and others each ran their own VASP or “virtual currency” register with local rules. The label describes the activity for AML purposes — it was never a single EU-wide licence.
What is a CASP?
A CASP, or Crypto-Asset Service Provider, is the term the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) uses for firms authorised to provide crypto-asset services in the bloc. MiCA lists the specific services that count: custody, operation of a trading platform, exchange, execution, placement, reception and transmission of orders, advice, and portfolio management, among others. A CASP authorisation is a full regulatory licence, not just an AML registration, and it is granted by a national competent authority such as Germany’s BaFin, France’s AMF, or Ireland’s Central Bank. Once granted, it can be passported across the EU and EEA.
VASP vs CASP: what changed under MiCA
The shift is from fragmented national AML registration (VASP) to a single harmonised EU licence (CASP). Under the old model, a firm registered as a VASP in one member state and had no automatic right to serve customers elsewhere. MiCA replaced that with one rulebook. The same capital, governance, DORA operational-resilience, and conduct standards apply whether you file in Lithuania or Malta, and an approved CASP can serve all 27 member states. AML duties did not disappear. They still apply, now sitting alongside the fuller prudential and conduct requirements CASP status brings. Put simply: VASP was about who you had to screen; CASP is about whether you are fit to operate at all.
Which term applies to you now?
If you serve EU customers, CASP is the status that governs you. MiCA’s CASP rules began applying at the end of 2024, with member-state transitional periods letting existing national VASP registrants keep trading for a limited window while they apply for full CASP authorisation. Those transitional windows vary by country and are closing. Outside the EU, “VASP” is still the working term in many jurisdictions and at FATF level, so a firm licensed in an offshore centre may correctly call itself a VASP. The practical rule: check which regulator you answer to. Inside the EU it is CASP under MiCA; elsewhere it is often still a national VASP regime. If your firm sits in both worlds, expect to hold a CASP authorisation for the EU and a separate local registration wherever else you operate. The two labels are not a badge you pick. They follow from the jurisdiction whose rules you fall under.
A note on the other “VASP”
This article uses VASP to mean Virtual Asset Service Provider, not the physics software of the same abbreviation. Search for “VASP” and you will also hit the Vienna Ab-initio Simulation Package, an unrelated academic tool for modelling materials at the atomic scale. There is no connection between the two. If you landed here looking for simulation-software licences or academic pricing, this is the crypto-regulation sense of the term. Everywhere on this page, VASP means a business that provides virtual-asset services and falls under AML and, in the EU, MiCA rules.