PORTUGAL Law and Practice Contributed by: João G Gil Figueira, Rodrigue Devillet Lima and Catarina Andrade Miranda, GFDL Advogados
GFDL Advogados Rua Rodrigues Sampaio 97 1st floor 1150-279 Lisboa Portugal
Tel: +351 210 997 356 Email: hello@gfdl.legal Web: www.gfdl.legal/
1. Fintech Market 1.1 Evolution of the Fintech Market
Portugal took approximately 30 months to adopt the domestic legislation necessary to implement MiCA. This delay created practical difficulties for entities seeking registration as crypto-asset service provid - ers (CASPs), as well as for entities already licensed in Portugal, since no transitional regime was initially established and the national competent authorities responsible for authorisation and supervision under MiCA had not yet been designated. As a result, a peri - od of regulatory uncertainty and operational stagna - tion affected the Portuguese blockchain ecosystem. This situation was addressed with the entry into force of Law No 69/2025 of 22 December, which imple - ments the MiCA Regulation in Portugal. This legisla - tion represents a decisive step towards the full regula - tory harmonisation of crypto-asset markets, bringing clarity after a prolonged period during which market participants lacked certainty as to the competent supervisory authority and applicable authorisation procedures. Law No 69/2025 clarifies, in particular, the following key aspects. • Supervisory and regulatory competences are allocated between the Bank of Portugal and the Securities Market Commission (CMVM), depending on the category of crypto-asset and the nature of the services provided. • The Bank of Portugal is responsible for the supervi - sion of public offerings of ARTs and EMTs, as well as for the prudential supervision of CASPs. • The CMVM is responsible for the supervision of public offerings of crypto-assets other than ARTs
The year 2024 marked a significant milestone for the fintech industry with the full implementation of Regula - tion (EU) 2023/1114 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 31 May 2023, commonly known as the “MiCA Regulation”. This regulation, which fully came into force in December 2024, established a compre - hensive legal framework for markets in crypto-assets. It now governs issuers of crypto-assets that were pre - viously unregulated under other EU financial services laws, as well as crypto-asset service providers dealing with e-money tokens and asset-referenced tokens. The primary aim of MiCA is to provide legal clarity for crypto-asset issuers and providers, fostering innova - tion while ensuring financial stability and protecting investors from associated risks. Alongside MiCA, another key regulatory development is the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), which came into force on 17 January 2025. DORA (Regula - tion EU 2022/2554) mandates that financial institu - tions, including credit institutions, payment services and electronic money providers, must build resilient internal security networks and systems capable of withstanding and recovering from disruptions, particu - larly those related to information and communication technologies (ICT). Until 2024, the Bank of Portugal was responsible for overseeing anti-money laundering (AML) and counter- terrorism financing (CTF) activities, as well as super - vising entities engaged in virtual asset activities, as outlined in Law No 83/2017.
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