The Google Play app store intends to take crypto wallets seriously. New rules will come into force on October 29, which will force the creators of certain services to make a choice: either meet the requirements or leave the site. The changes will primarily affect custodial crypto wallets, and placing them on Google Play will become a difficult task.

To stay afloat in the new reality of the store, company developers will have to seriously try with documents. They will need to confirm that they are working legally, and in a bunch of places at once – in about fifteen countries around the world. And these are large financial centers, like the United States and the European Union. If they do not have all the necessary permissions, then the path to the official store will be closed for them.

The requirements in these regions are really strict. In the United States, regulators will require official registration with FinCEN to obtain MSB status. In the European Union, the necessary condition will be the CASP status provided for by the new MiCA comprehensive regulation. Without meeting European standards, working with users from the EU will become impossible.

The introduction of comprehensive anti-money laundering (AML) measures will become inevitable. Strict verification of each user (KYC) will also become inevitable, which, in fact, will equalize custodial wallets with banks or payment services in terms of regulatory control.

However, Google hastened to clarify the situation in order to mitigate the situation. They emphasized that these strict new rules will not affect non-custodial wallets in any way. Applications where users independently store their private keys and have full control over their funds will still be able to stay on Google Play under the same conditions.