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Under the Fintec Law (Ley 21.521), the Banco Central de Chile (BCCh) holds statutory power to regulate stablecoin issuance and operation as a means of payment; as of the August 2026 Informe de Sistemas de Pago the BCCh has moved from a purely conceptual/monitoring posture to a committed rulemaking timeline, confirming it will publish a consultation draft framework before year-end 2026, on a gradual basis complementary to CMF's existing Fintec Law regulations.
The most material recent development in this module is the introduction of a prior-notice duty for incumbents. NCG 559 (issued 9 Feb 2026, in force on that date) inserted Chapter X into NCG 502, establishing a prior-notice duty for traditional CMF-supervised providers offering Fintech Law services without separate registration, with a transitional reporting deadline of 30 April 2026 for entities already providing such services. This obligation applies to both bank and non-bank supervised entities, capturing traditional supervised firms that have begun offering fintech services under their existing authorisation. The near-term reporting trigger is a concrete compliance event rather than a standing structural feature, and it is the live deadline in the licensing layer for the current window.
The absence of a unitary EMI licence is the defining feature for any non-bank payments operator assessing market access. Where a single passport-style licence would consolidate authorisation, Chile instead requires the operator to map its activities onto the stored-value route, the Title II provider route, or both, with the registration and authorisation burden differing across activity types. This shapes entity structuring and the sequencing of market entry.
Outlook
The 30 April 2026 NCG 559 reporting deadline is the nearest operative trigger in this module and defines the immediate compliance timeline for traditional supervised providers. Beyond it, the dual-track architecture is established and stable, with the practical entry route for non-banks continuing to depend on whether activities fall under stored-value issuance or Title II provider registration.
Licensing, Authorisation & Market Access
Banco Central de Chile's August 2026 Informe de Sistemas de Pago commits to publishing a new stablecoin regulatory framework for consultation, setting conditions for local issuance of payment-use stablecoins under the Fintec Law (Ley 21.521), gradual and complementary to the CMF's existing regulation. BCCh President Rosanna Costa's launch speech pins that commitment to an explicit timeline, targeting a first, gradual stablecoin regulatory proposal before year-end 2026, again framed as complementary to the CMF's Fintec Law regime. The BCCh had already published a conceptual analysis framing fully-backed stablecoins as functionally analogous to bank deposits or prepaid balances, previewing the liquidity, AML/KYC and redemption-at-par considerations that will underpin the coming framework. Authority for the regime sits with the central bank under the Fintec Law, running alongside — rather than instead of — the CMF's existing Fintec Law licensing track, so the framework is expected to apply across both bank and non-bank issuers of payment-use stablecoins.
Outlook
The consultation draft is expected before year-end 2026, but reserve and safeguarding requirements, and the exact publication date, have not yet been disclosed; the framework is described as gradual, implying phased rather than immediate application once published.
2 earlier distinct update(s)
Licensing, Authorisation & Market Access
Chile's licensing perimeter for fintech and payment services extended this cycle through a notification-based track that sits alongside, rather than replacing, the main registration regime. NCG 559, issued by the Comision para el Mercado Financiero on 9 February 2026, inserted a new Chapter X into NCG 502, requiring entities already supervised by the CMF that provide a Fintech-Law-listed service outside the main Registro de Prestadores de Servicios Financieros to give the Commission prior notice rather than undergo full RPSF registration. The compliance deadline for this notification was 30 April 2026. The distinction matters for both bank and non-bank participants: an entity already holding banking or other CMF authorisation that adds a Fintech-Law-listed activity does not need to run the full registration process again, but it cannot simply proceed without any regulatory touchpoint either — the notification requirement closes that gap.
The scale of activity moving through the underlying RPSF registration process gives a concrete read on market entry: the first NCG 502 registration round received 335 applications, of which 160 also initiated the parallel operating-authorisation process required for entities seeking to actually begin operating rather than merely register. That gap between registration applications and operating-authorisation initiations — 335 versus 160 — is itself informative: it suggests a substantial share of applicants are securing registered status without yet moving to full operational authorisation, a pattern relevant to both bank-affiliated and non-bank payment-institution and e-money-institution applicants navigating the same registry.
Taken together, NCG 559's notification track and the registration-volume data point to a market-access perimeter that is actively tightening in its documentation and notification requirements while the underlying registry continues to process a substantial applicant pool. The bank-versus-non-bank distinction is structurally important here: banks and other already-supervised entities face the lighter notification track, while genuinely new non-bank payment-institution and e-money-institution entrants must run the full RPSF registration and, where applicable, the operating-authorisation process.
Outlook
Watch for whether the 160 entities that initiated operating-authorisation alongside registration receive authorisation decisions in the coming cycles, and whether the notification-track population created by NCG 559 grows as more already-supervised entities add Fintech-Law-listed services to their existing authorisations.
Licensing, Authorisation & Market Access
Chile's open-finance and non-bank payment-licensing framework under Ley Fintec continued its phased implementation this cycle, with two distinct developments moving on different tracks. First, the CMF amended Norma de Caracter General N514 on 1 June 2026, detailing the technical requirements for information exchange and payment initiation under the Sistema de Finanzas Abiertas (SFA), Chile's open-finance system (High confidence, primary CMF publication). This amendment sharpens the technical specification of SFA obligations for both bank and non-bank participants ahead of the system's eventual entry into force.
Second, and moving in the opposite direction on timeline, the SFA's effective date has been postponed to July 2027, citing implementation complexity (High confidence, same primary source). This is the second postponement of the SFA's effective date under Ley Fintec, and the pattern is now clear enough to read as a structural feature of Chile's open-finance rollout rather than a one-off delay: Chile is pursuing a deliberately cautious, phased approach to open-finance implementation, prioritising technical readiness over a fixed go-live date, even as it continues to publish increasingly detailed technical specifications in the interim.
Separately from the SFA track, the CMF's RPSF (Registro de Prestadores de Servicios Financieros) registry continued to progress: as of May 2026, it had received 335 applications, registered 42 entities, and granted 37 full operating authorisations (Assessed confidence, secondary aggregation of registry progress; primary CMF registry data not independently retrieved this cycle). This is exclusively a non-bank pathway, and the roughly one-in-nine ratio of applications to full authorisations to date suggests a deliberately paced review process rather than a backlog concentrated at any single stage. For non-bank payment institutions and e-money issuers assessing Chilean market entry, this ratio is a useful benchmark for realistic time-to-authorisation planning, though the underlying data does not disaggregate by applicant type or indicate median processing time.
Reading the NCG 514 amendment, the SFA delay, and the RPSF progression together, the picture for market access is one of steady, incremental regulatory build-out rather than either acceleration or stagnation. Non-bank payment institutions have a functioning, if selective, registration pathway already operating and producing authorisations, while the broader open-finance infrastructure that would eventually connect bank and non-bank participants under common information-exchange and payment-initiation rules remains more than a year from taking effect. This creates a two-speed market-access environment: non-bank entities can obtain RPSF authorisation and begin operating today under existing rules, while the more transformative open-finance connectivity that SFA promises remains prospective.
The bank-versus-non-bank distinction is worth stating explicitly for this module: the NCG 514 amendment and the SFA framework apply to both bank and non-bank participants jointly, since open-finance information-exchange and payment-initiation obligations are designed to operate across the whole regulated payments ecosystem, whereas the RPSF registry is specifically the non-bank authorisation pathway. An operator's market-access strategy in Chile should therefore treat RPSF registration as the near-term operative licensing question, and SFA compliance as a mid-term technical-integration question tied to the now twice-delayed 2027 effective date. For prospective market entrants weighing Chile specifically, the practical sequencing implication is that RPSF authorisation is the correct first-order licensing objective regardless of an entrant's eventual open-finance ambitions, since SFA connectivity obligations will not become operative before mid-2027 at the earliest and are explicitly contingent on the framework holding to its now twice-revised timeline.
It is also worth noting that the RPSF registry's reported figures — 335 applications, 42 registrations, 37 authorisations — were sourced this cycle from a secondary aggregator rather than directly from CMF's own registry publication; institutions relying on these figures for competitive-landscape or planning purposes should treat them as directionally indicative rather than as a verified CMF-published statistic pending primary confirmation.
Outlook
Watch for whether the SFA's July 2027 effective date holds without a third postponement, and for the pace of RPSF authorisations relative to applications through the remainder of 2026, which would indicate whether the current roughly one-in-nine completion ratio is stable, improving, or a temporary artefact of the registry's early stage. Any further NCG amendments detailing SFA technical requirements ahead of the 2027 date should be read as continued technical-readiness build-out consistent with the current phased-implementation pattern.