Two letters for moving money

The shop

Jetty Pay Ltd is a Mauritius company. Its founders want a product that lets small businesses collect card payments from their own customers and settle the money to those businesses the next day. Jetty Pay would hold the flow of customer funds between the card transaction and the settlement. It would not take deposits as a bank. It would not operate a card scheme for other payment companies. It would not distribute securities.

The pitch deck says “payments licence” once. In the folder behind the deck are two application forms that the founders downloaded because both forms contain the word payment. One is the FSC form associated with Payment Intermediary Services, FS-2.9. The other is the Bank of Mauritius form for a Payment Service Provider. A third PDF, an application to operate a payment system, was downloaded because the filename looked similar. Nobody has read which Act each form belongs to.

The week

Monday. The founders tell the FSC desk that FS-2.9 must be enough, because the Commission regulates financial services and payments are a financial service.

Tuesday. A banker on their advisory board says customer funds in transit are a Bank of Mauritius matter, and that an FSC letter will not be the permission her bank’s compliance team will ask to see.

Wednesday. They ask whether a Global Business Licence would “wrap” whichever answer is slower. It would not. The activity would still need the permission that matches the activity.

Thursday. Someone suggests the payment-system authorisation instead of a PSP licence, because “system” sounds larger and therefore safer. The course separates the operator of a system from the provider of a payment service. Jetty Pay’s facts, as told, are the service: moving its customers’ money. They have not described a system that other providers would use.

Friday. The two forms go into two folders. The system form goes back in the drawer until there is a system to describe.

What they ask

Papers next door

A banking licence is a Banking Act question, and deposit-taking is a different activity from a payment service. A VASP wallet class is a virtual-assets permission, not a PSP licence by another name. FS-1.6 treasury and FS-1.9 global treasury are group-cash files, not this customer-money product. Tax on the fees Jetty Pay hopes to earn is a Mauritius Tax question after the permission is identified. The permission comes first.

The statute

Put the National Payment Systems Act on the BoM folder: section 9 for the payment service provider, section 8 for a system operator. Put the Financial Services Act on the FSC folder, and keep FS-2.9 as the specialised activity the directory actually names. Section 14 of that Act is an application to the Commission. It is not an application to the Bank.

Two regulators wrote two letters because the activities are different. The slide collapsed them into one noun. Expand the noun back into the Act that governs the funds before anyone pays a fee.