Fake EBA Register: How to Check a Crypto Licence

The EBA register is the directory listing the credit and payment institutions authorised in the European Economic Area. Anyone who wants to know whether a provider really holds an authorisation looks there. That very act of looking is what a scheme targets, one the German financial regulator BaFin warned about on October 9, 2026: the operators of a supposed European bank directed prospective customers to check their authorisation in a register that sat under their own domain.

BaFin's wording is this: "The register displayed on this website is not an official EBA register and appears to be forged." It also names the address where the genuine directory sits: euclid.eba.europa.eu. The lesson is an uncomfortable one, because it demands one step more than before. Searching for a provider in the register is no longer enough. You first have to know whether the register you are looking at is real.

The BaFin Warning of October 9: a Rebuilt Register Under the Operator's Own Domain

BaFin published two consumer notices on unauthorised business that day. The first concerns offers on the websites vantex-bank(.)com and vantex-bank(.)net. According to the regulator, no credit institution by the name of Vantex Bank exists in either Germany or France. The unknown operators claimed, BaFin says, that the supposed authorisation could be verified in the "public register" of the European Banking Authority on the website euclide-eba(.)com.