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Digital Asset Accounts in the European Economic Area (EEA) is operated by Circle France SAS, which holds transitional authorization from the AMF (France’s financial markets regulator) under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) Article 60(4). This authorization covers custody and transfer of USDC and EURC for business end users across the EEA. Distributors serving the EEA interact with a different booking layer, additional authentication requirements, and stricter asset controls compared to the global model.

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Circle France SAS and MiCA authorization

Circle France SAS contracts with EEA-resident end users and is responsible for MiCA compliance in the region. The AMF granted Circle France SAS transitional authorization under MiCA Article 60(4) on April 20, 2026, covering the custody and transfer of USDC and EURC across the EEA.
MiCA Article 60(4) is a transitional authorization; it does not confer full Crypto-Asset Service Provider (CASP) authorization. Retail and consumer custody services require full CASP authorization and are outside the current scope of Digital Asset Accounts in the EEA.

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Booking patterns

Which Circle entity books an end user’s account depends on the distributor’s principal place of business and incorporation. Two booking patterns are supported: Cross-entity routing is handled automatically based on end-user residency. Distributors do not manage this directly. For more information, see Onboard EEA customers.

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Onchain asset segregation

MiCA requires that customer assets be physically segregated onchain rather than pooled in omnibus wallets. Unlike the United States model, where the Direct End-User Custody model uses omnibus wallet structures and tracks individual balances at the record level, EEA subaccount balances are held in dedicated onchain reserve addresses operated by Circle Mint SAS. Distributors do not configure or manage asset segregation; Circle handles this automatically.

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Platform address book

In the EEA, all external beneficiary addresses must be pre-registered in the Platform Address Book before an outbound transfer can be initiated; deposit addresses are excluded. Addresses progress from PENDING to VERIFIED, or may be permanently BLOCKED. For the full address registration workflow and fail-closed behavior, see EEA API behavior. Inbound crypto deposits may enter a held state pending Travel Rule evaluation; see Transaction states.

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Strong customer authentication

Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) is required for sensitive actions in the EEA. Two authentication mechanisms apply depending on the context: A bearer token alone is insufficient for EEA programmatic money movement. The QWAC is a regulated digital certificate that authenticates the API client as a known legal entity. For the full SCA flow, complete list of SCA-governed actions, and EEA distributor compliance obligations, see EEA API behavior and Compliance obligations.

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Asset scope

Digital Asset Accounts in the EEA supports USDC and EURC only. Swap, earn, additional assets, and locally issued stablecoins are not available in the EEA and are fail-closed at the API level; requests for out-of-scope assets or operations return an error rather than a degraded result. For the full list of supported currencies and blockchains, see Supported currencies and blockchains.