Crypto firms have spent years trying to convince banks that they’re safe to do business with. Even now, with far more regulation in place than a few years ago, plenty of those firms still get turned away at the door. Jelizaveta Paskovskaja, Money Laundering Reporting Officer (MLRO) at CryptoProcessing by Coinspaid, has a clear explanation for why the rejections keep coming. Regulation never automatically creates trust, she says. It hands the market a framework, but banks and partners still have to feel they understand how a crypto business actually works before they sign off on it.
Why a “No” Still Beats Doing the Work
That gap between regulation and trust is exactly why de-risking has stuck around even as the rulebook keeps getting thicker. Many traditional institutions still find it easier to issue a flat refusal than to build out a proper risk-based view of a crypto partner, Paskovskaja explains. Crypto firms have made real progress on their side of the table. The problem sits with banks that would rather avoid the work of assessment altogether.
So what actually convinces a bank to say yes. Jelizaveta points to one core test, whether a company looks and behaves like a serious financial institution rather than a tech startup that happens to move money. Governance has to be real. Ownership has to be clear enough that a bank’s own compliance team can map it out in an afternoon. Whoever runs compliance inside the crypto firm also needs enough authority to actually slow down a risky deal.
