Italy: Adopted Italian Decree introducing registration requirement for virtual currency and digital wallets

On 13 February 2022, the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance (Ministry) adopted a decree introducing a mandatory registration requirement for virtual currency and digital wallet service providers operating in Italy. Particularly, virtual currency and digital wallet service providers are required to communicate to the Ministry that they operate on the national territory, in order to be added in the dedicated section of the register of currency exchanges held by the agents and credit brokers organization (OAM). The OAM must organise the dedicated section of the register within 90 days from the implementation of the Decree. The virtual currency and digital wallet service providers shall apply to the register within 60 days from its establishment. To join the register, the service provider must fulfill certain requirements. Natural persons must be an Italian or EU citizen, while legal persons must have a registered office and administrative headquarters in Italy or, for EU legal persons, a permanent establishment in Italy. Moreover, such service providers shall communicate to the Ministry a series of details on customers' operations every three months (e.g., customers' identification data, the total balance of legal currencies and virtual currencies referable to each customer, the number of conversion and transfer operations of virtual currencies referable to each customer). The Decree will be implemented when published in the Italian Official Gazette.