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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
Three distinct market-access developments moved in Chile this cycle, each affecting a different segment of licensed and quasi-licensed payment activity. First, the Comision para el Mercado Financiero proposed regulatory amendments that would significantly expand the scope of complementary activities available to payment card operators, a liberalising move that would widen the range of services card operators can offer alongside their core licensed activity. Second, CMF Norma de Caracter General N569, issued in June 2026, formally postponed the go-live date for the Sistema de Finanzas Abiertas (Open Finance regime) from July 2026 to July 2027, affecting both CMF-supervised financial entities and non-bank Fintec providers subject to the regime; this gives the market an additional year to prepare technical and governance infrastructure before Open Finance obligations become binding. Third, since 9 February 2026 under CMF Norma de Caracter General N559, traditional supervised financial entities exempt from registration in the Registro de Prestadores de Servicios Financieros, including banks, securities intermediaries, exchanges, fund managers and insurers, must give the CMF prior notice before beginning any Fintec-adjacent services.
Taken together, these three developments show a market-access posture that is liberalising in one respect (card-operator activity scope) while simultaneously building in more process and more time elsewhere (the Open Finance delay, and the new prior-notice duty for exempt entities). This is consistent with a gradualist sequencing approach to payments-market liberalisation generally, rather than a broad simultaneous rollout across every segment at once. The prior-notice duty under NCG 559 applies specifically to banks and other traditionally licensed entities moving into Fintec-adjacent activity without full RPSF registration, distinguishing that pathway from the RPSF registration route that applies to purpose-built Fintec providers.
Outlook
The CMF's consultation on expanded complementary activities for payment card operators is the item to track first, since it would represent the most immediate liberalising change among the three developments. The July 2027 Open Finance go-live date is the second marker, now a year later than originally planned, giving both banks and Fintec providers additional runway. The NCG 559 prior-notice mechanism, already in force since February 2026, is a procedural checkpoint rather than a pending reform, but its application in practice to banks expanding into Fintec-adjacent services is worth monitoring for how strictly the CMF enforces the prior-notice requirement.
4 earlier distinct update(s)
Licensing, Authorisation & Market Access
Ley 21.521, Chile's Fintech Law, brings seven new digital-finance business models within the CMF's licensing perimeter, including crypto-asset custody and alternative trading systems. This is a confirmed, Tier-1-sourced finding and represents a structural expansion of the regulatory perimeter for non-bank payment institutions and e-money issuers, which previously operated largely outside dedicated CMF licensing for these specific activities. The bank-PSP versus non-bank-PI/EMI distinction is central here: the newly captured business models are predominantly non-bank digital-finance providers, meaning the practical compliance burden of this expansion falls disproportionately on entrants that did not previously hold any CMF authorisation, rather than on incumbent banks that were already within the CMF's supervisory perimeter for other activities.
The implementing mechanism for this licensing expansion is CMF General Rule N502, which requires providers to notify the CMF before commencing services regulated under Ley Fintec. This pre-commencement notification requirement is a confirmed, Tier-1-sourced obligation and functions as the practical gate that new entrants must clear before beginning operations. Secondary commentary corroborates that the Fintech Law establishes both a licensing system and a regulatory sandbox allowing supervised temporary operation for innovative projects, giving prospective entrants a lower-friction pathway to test products under CMF supervision ahead of full licensing, though this sandbox detail is assessed at Probable confidence given its Tier-3 sourcing.
An open gap from this cycle is that the exact NCG number or numbers beyond N502 governing crypto-asset custodian registration categories specifically have not been independently verified against CMF norm text. This means the full licensing taxonomy applicable to different classes of non-bank digital-finance providers is not yet completely mapped from primary sources.
Outlook
Further CMF implementing norms beyond NCG N502 are the item to watch for a complete picture of the licensing taxonomy applicable to newly captured non-bank digital-finance business models. The regulatory sandbox mechanism, once more primary-source detail becomes available, may also become a more prominent market-access pathway for innovative entrants seeking to test products ahead of full licensure.
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.
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.