The Virtual Assets Service Providers Bill 2026 is written for crypto businesses, but some of the readers who matter most sit in the compliance departments of foreign banks.

 For Jamaica, as for much of the Caribbean, access to those banks has been harder to keep than to lose.

Correspondent banking lets a local lender make and receive payments in United States dollars and other major currencies through an account at a larger bank abroad. It carries remittances, trade finance, tourism receipts and the foreign-exchange flows that small open economies depend on. Over the past decade, several international banks have closed or restricted these relationships with Caribbean institutions. They have rarely pointed to wrongdoing. Instead, they have judged that the profit from small accounts in the region does not cover the cost of monitoring money laundering and terrorist financing risk.

Those banks lean heavily on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) when they assess a country. The FATF sets the global standard for anti-money laundering controls, and its evaluations signal to foreign lenders how much risk a jurisdiction carries. Since 2019, its standard has required countries to license or register virtual asset service providers and supervise them for money laundering risk. A country with an active crypto market and no such regime has a visible gap in its defences. 

The bill aims to close that gap. It requires any business handling digital assets for others to hold a Financial Services Commission licence if it serves people in Jamaica, wherever the business is based. Licensees would carry the same obligations as banks under the Proceeds of Crime Act, the Terrorism Prevention Act and the United Nations Security Council Resolutions Implementation Act. That includes knowing their customers and reporting suspicious activity.

Finance Minister Fayval Williams, opening debate in the House on September 22, presented the bill mainly as consumer protection. The case on banking grounds may carry as much weight. Today, crypto money enters and leaves Jamaica through ordinary bank accounts, and local banks have limited visibility into where it came from. A licensed sector gives banks named, supervised counterparties. It also gives foreign correspondents a clearer answer when they ask how Jamaica manages the risk.

The choice of full licensing over simpler registration strengthens that message. It is the more demanding option, and it tells evaluators the country is supervising the sector rather than merely recording who operates in it.

A law on paper will not settle the question. FATF assessors and correspondent banks look for evidence that rules are enforced: licences refused, inspections carried out, penalties applied. The FSC will need staff and systems to supervise a technically complex industry, and a regime that exists mainly in statute could draw criticism rather than credit.

The bill still has to clear the Senate. Its effect on Jamaica’s banking relationships will depend on how the FSC applies it in its first years.