Why Chile, Why Now
Chile is closing the transition period for crypto service providers. On 26 June 2026, the Chilean Financial Markets Commission ("CMF") cancelled the registrations of providers that had not supplied the information NCG 502 requires or had not applied for authorisation in time, ending their transitional permission to operate. On the same day it rejected seven applications to provide intermediation of financial instruments, including that of Orionx, one of Chile's established crypto exchanges.
The regime behind those decisions is unusually specific. Under Law 21,521 (the Fintech Act) and NCG 502, custody and intermediation of crypto-assets are licensed activities, with minimum capital and guarantee requirements that scale with business volume.
Demand is following the rules. Since NCG 559 (February 2026), Chilean securities intermediaries and commodity brokers that want to offer Fintech Act services, custody and intermediation included, do so on prior notice to the CMF rather than through a new registration. Fund managers are limited to order routing and investment advice, and insurers to investment advice. Banks must wait for a bank-specific rule. Chilean institutions building crypto offerings will need institutional-grade custody and execution behind them, and much of that capacity sits abroad, among other jurisdictions, in Switzerland.
The question for a foreign provider is no longer whether Chile regulates this business. It is what you can do from abroad, and where the line sits.
The Perimeter Is Defined by Activity, Not by Client
The Fintech Act treats crypto-assets as financial instruments, not securities. Two of its seven regulated services capture most institutional digital asset business:
- Custody of financial instruments. This covers safekeeping of crypto-assets and keys, and also the money a custodian holds from sales or for purchases. Settlement balances sit inside the custody service, not in a separate banking activity, as long as they stay instrumental to settlement.
- Intermediation of financial instruments. This covers buying or selling for the account of third parties, crypto-to-fiat and crypto-to-crypto alike, including buying on your own account with the prior intent of selling to a client. Since NCG 524 (December 2024), an intention to dispose of an instrument solely to pledge it, provide it as collateral, place it in custody or hand it over for collection does not count as that prior intent.
Both require registration in the CMF's Registry of Financial Service Providers and prior CMF authorisation. Because crypto-assets are not securities, the broker-dealer regime of the Securities Market Law does not apply to pure crypto execution. Tokenised shares, bonds or fund units bring it straight back.
Who the client is changes how you must behave, not whether you need a licence. NCG 524 waives several pre-trade disclosures when the client is an institutional or qualified investor. It does not take an institutions-only business out of scope.
The Trigger: Where You Perform, and Whom You Target
NCG 502 reaches two kinds of provider, whatever their country of origin:
- Those who perform regulated services materially in Chile, through physical or electronic means.
- Those who use any means of communication to direct the offering of their services to persons resident in Chile.
The second limb, the "directed offering", is the fulcrum of every cross-border analysis. The test looks at conduct, not at where assets or settlement sit. Keys in a Swiss vault and settlement in euros support a cross-border characterisation, but they do not establish it.
The decisive question is not where your keys sit. It is whether you directed an offering at Chile.— Dr. Verónica Pollak, C² Multiplier
The CMF has said how it reads the test. In its published FAQ on NCG 502, it treats a provider as serving in Chile when it is physically present, for example through advertising in Chile, offices or current accounts in the country, or when it uses electronic means to target people in Chile, wherever the offer comes from. Two practical consequences follow. Local bank accounts can count as presence, so a settlement leg run through Chile can undo an otherwise clean cross-border model. And in the same FAQ, the CMF treats routing orders to entities abroad as a service not provided in Chile, the closest it has come to endorsing an outbound execution model.
The reverse-solicitation corollary is still inferred, not written. If a Chilean institution seeks you out entirely on its own initiative, nothing has been offered to Chilean residents, and the service is performed abroad. That is the prevailing reading among Chilean practitioners. It is not in the Act or in NCG 502, and the CMF's guidance addresses targeting without addressing the unprompted client.
Six Scenarios, Six Assessments
Two of the six scenarios below are clear prohibitions without a licence. Two work under conditions you must be able to prove later. The remaining two are narrow exceptions that are easily lost.
| Scenario | Assessment | What it takes |
|---|---|---|
| 1. A Chilean institution contacts you on its own initiative | Can, with conditions | Defensible only if you can prove the client's initiative and show no prior targeting. |
| 2. You actively solicit or market to Chilean institutions | Cannot without registration and authorisation | Any offering directed at Chile is inside the perimeter, and a client won this way cannot later be re-papered as reverse-solicited. |
| 3. You serve that client remotely from your home jurisdiction | Can, with conditions | Remote delivery does not cure targeting, so scenario 1 must hold first. Then keep infrastructure, trading desk and settlement outside Chile, including bank accounts. |
| 4. Your people travel to Chile for business development | Narrowly, the highest-risk scenario | Defensible only where the visit follows the client's own approach. |
| 5. A local introducer refers clients to you | Narrowly | A paid introducer is likely treated as your channel, so its marketing becomes your directed offering, whatever its own registration. Only an independent recommendation, made unprompted and unpaid by you, sits close to scenario 1. |
| 6. You establish a permanent presence in Chile | Cannot without registration and authorisation | Inside the perimeter by definition. A Chilean entity, however, is not always needed (next section). |
The re-papering point in scenario 2 is my own reading, but I would advise any client to plan on it. Once an offering has been directed at a client, no later document turns it back into an unsolicited relationship. The same logic drives scenario 5: under the CMF's FAQ, those acting on behalf of a registered provider need no registration of their own, which means their conduct is attributed to the principal. If the principal is not registered, that conduct is its directed offering.
Two Things Chilean Law Does Not Give You, and One Thing It Does
No codified reverse-solicitation exemption. The exemption exists only as an inference from the "directed offering" wording. Anyone who has worked under MiFID II or MiCA will recognise the concept, but Chile has written none of it down. Nor does Chile offer an institutional carve-out: an institutions-only business remains in scope.
No binding line, and no precedent. The CMF's FAQ describes what it treats as targeting, but it is guidance, not a rule, and no ruling or enforcement action has yet tested it against a foreign provider. The CMF's June 2026 decisions show it is applying the framework strictly. One public case against a foreign provider could reset the interpretive baseline overnight.
Under Title I.C.3 of NCG 502, as rewritten by NCG 524, a foreign entity may register without a Chilean domicile if two conditions are both met:
- No sanction or pending charges in the ten years before its application for serious Fintech Act infringements, or for equivalent conduct abroad. The test covers the whole business group, its controllers, directors and managers.
- In Chile, it serves only qualified investors as defined in the Securities Market Law.
An entity using this route is also exempt from the exclusive-purpose requirement, so a diversified group or a bank can register without carving out a dedicated vehicle.
For advisory, order routing and alternative trading systems, the same conditions also remove the authorisation requirement (new Title II.G). Custody and intermediation are not on that list, and NCG 524 deliberately removed authorisation from the domicile exception. Authorisation, capital and guarantees still apply, but a local subsidiary may not be needed. The CMF's FAQ summarises the route more broadly, as an exemption from both domicile and authorisation for any foreign firm serving only qualified investors. The rule text is narrower, and it is the text that binds.
The catch is the ten-year test. Applied across a large banking group, "equivalent conduct abroad" is where many institutions will need to look hard. CMF practice on foreign custodians and intermediaries using this route is still thin.
What Disciplined Providers Do
When the law is uncertain, your evidence becomes the defence. The providers that handle Chile well do six things before they onboard their first Chilean client.
- Document the client's initiative. Record the first inbound contact, its date and channel, before anyone returns the call.
- Ring-fence marketing. Exclude Chile from campaigns, events and targeted ads, down to the sales team's LinkedIn outreach.
- Put travel under a written protocol. No trip to Chile without a prior client request on file, and no pitching beyond the agenda the client set.
- Pay no one in Chile to bring you clients. Introducer and referral arrangements turn someone else's marketing into your offering.
- Keep settlement off Chilean accounts. The CMF lists local current accounts among the signs of presence.
- Engage the CMF early. Where the model is borderline, a conversation before the first onboarding costs less than a case after it.
One more point: for many clients, the binding constraint is on the Chilean side. Banks must satisfy CMF outsourcing and information-security rules, including audit access, exit plans and incident reporting. Providers that arrive with a ready outsourcing file onboard faster. That file covers assurance reports, the sub-custody chain and data location. Chile's new data protection law, Law 21,719, is due to take effect on 1 December 2026. A government bill filed on 1 September 2026 would postpone it to 1 December 2027.
From Assessments to Implementation
The assessments are the starting point; the outcome is decided in the documentation, the conduct protocol and the approach to the CMF.
A pre-entry checklist for boards and compliance teams is available on request.
Primary sources: Law 21,521 · NCG 524 (amending NCG 502) · CMF FAQ on NCG 502 · CMF announcement on NCG 559 · CMF cancellations, 26 June 2026 · CMF rejections, 26 June 2026 · Law 21,719 postponement bill
This article is general information on the law as of 8 October 2026. It is not legal advice and does not create a lawyer-client relationship. The views expressed are the author's own.