What the sector pays and who the companies are
Division 64 — banks and the rest of financial intermediation — paid around 32,600 lei gross a month at the end of 2025, almost twice the national average of about 16,400. Software pays more still, at around 45,700 lei.
But that figure covers only part of this page. Division 66, home to auxiliary services — payments, processing, currency exchange — paid around 15,600, below the national average. The gap between the two halves of the same statistical section is more than twofold. If you open an exchange office, your payroll looks like a shop’s, not a bank’s.
Headcount follows the same line. On 31 December 2025, division 64 employed almost 13,000 people and division 66 around 1,600. The entire auxiliary side of Moldova’s financial system — currency exchange, payments, brokerage, insurance intermediation — would fit inside one mid-sized bank.
One ratio shows where the open door really is. On 1 September 2026, the National Bank listed 267 licensed currency exchange offices, operating 415 points including branches, plus seven hotels with their own exchange point. In the registers read the same month, the list of payment companies and postal service providers held three companies with a licence in force, and the list of electronic money issuers six. That is almost thirty to one, and it describes exactly where someone starting from scratch gets in.
Why these four trades are kept apart
All four need a licence from the same authority, and that is where what they have in common ends.
The capital threshold runs from 350,000 lei for a payment company doing only money remittance to 100 million for a bank — a ratio of almost three hundred to one on a single page. The legal form differs too: a payment company can be an LLC, a bank must be a joint-stock company, and a savings and loan association is not a commercial company at all. Decision deadlines range from 15 working days for a savings and loan association to about a year of successive stages for a bank.
What does not vary is the authority. None of these four licences comes from the Public Services Agency, because the permissive-acts law says of itself, in the article on its scope, that it does not apply to the financial sector. The currency law repeats this explicitly for exchange offices, to leave no doubt.
That sets the natural order of decisions. First you choose the branch, because it determines the capital and the legal form. Only then do you register the company — except for a bank and a savings and loan association: the bank is registered after the National Bank’s prior approval, and the association with its endorsement.
What it costs to open
Licence fees are the small, predictable part: 12,000 lei for an exchange office, 8,000 or 12,000 for a payment company depending on the services in the package, 30,000 for an electronic money issuer, 1,625 or 3,250 lei for a savings and loan association, 50,000 for a bank. All licences are issued for an unlimited term, so the fee is paid once.
The real cost is capital, and it is not a balance-sheet figure. For an exchange office, the 500,000 lei is working money that has to physically exist on the premises, in an account at a licensed bank or in the machine, every business day. For a payment company and an e-money issuer, contributions are paid in full in cash and may not come from loans, other borrowed funds or users’ advances. For a bank, shares are paid in full in cash at subscription.
Equipment comes on top of capital. An exchange office needs a cash register at every counter, a banknote authentication device at every counter, a foreign currency guide, security and a video surveillance and recording system running in real time throughout opening hours. Recordings are kept for at least 15 calendar days.
The tax regime is chosen as for any other company, according to turnover and headcount. It is worth deciding in the first month.
What to know before you start
The director’s documents are not filed only once
For an exchange office, the licensing file contains the criminal record certificates of the shareholders, the beneficial owners, the director, the deputy director and the chief accountant; sworn statements by the last three that no penalty bars them from managing a commercial company or keeping accounts; their personal files, drawn up on the National Bank’s template, with copies of their identity documents; and a copy of the chief accountant’s degree in economics.
The part few people read is the paragraph at the end of the same article: the criminal record certificates and the statements are submitted to the National Bank every year, and the National Bank’s regulation sets the deadline at 1 April. This is not an opening file, it is a recurring obligation. And when the director, the deputy or the chief accountant changes, the new person’s documents are filed within 10 working days of the change.
At a bank, people are approved before they take office
Every member of the management body and every key function holder must be approved by the National Bank before starting to exercise their responsibilities or — where the regulations allow — notified after appointment, in which case the National Bank may object afterwards.
The approval application is decided within 45 working days of the complete file, extendable by another 30 working days if further examination is needed. For board members there is a separate deadline of 60 working days from election within which the bank must file the application; if it does not, the board is deemed reduced by the persons whose documents did not arrive in time.
The planning consequence is simple: a change of chief executive is not an internal decision with immediate effect but a procedure with a two-month horizon.
Sole activity means exactly that
Three of the four branches on this page narrow the company’s object by law, and the strictest wording is for currency exchange: an exchange office is defined as a legal entity whose sole activity is cash currency exchange with individuals.
That rules out adding a counter to an existing company, however convenient the location. It also rules out keeping a trading activity in the same company to cover the rent in the first months. The only similar form is a hotel’s exchange point, which is licensed separately, costs 6,000 lei and may only buy currency from individuals, not sell it.
The licence is tied to the address
Currency exchange may be carried on only at the addresses stated in the licence and in its authorised copies. A move is not an administrative formality handled after the fact: it is a reissue, and the premises must meet the minimum requirements set by the National Bank and may not be used at the same time by another exchange office.
For a company building a network, this rule changes the order of things. The lease is signed before the file, because proof of the right of use is attached to the application, and each branch needs its own 500,000 lei of working cash on top.
Non-bank supervision moved to the National Bank
Until 1 July 2023, savings and loan associations, non-bank lending organisations and insurers were supervised by the National Commission for Financial Markets. Since that date the supervisory authority for all three has been the National Bank of Moldova.
For anyone opening an association now, the change matters in practice: the licence, the confirmation of directors and the prudential rules come from the National Bank. Guides, forms and articles older than 2023 point to a different authority, and the difference is not one of name — it is one of procedure and deadlines.
Here the answer is not yours to give; the branch gives it.
A bank must be formed as a joint-stock company, under joint-stock company law and banking law. There is no LLC option, however few shareholders you have.
A payment company and an e-money issuer may be either an LLC or a joint-stock company. For a company with two or three founders, the LLC is the natural form and stays that way until an investor arrives who wants shares.
A currency exchange office may be an LLC or a joint-stock company, but with its object narrowed to a single activity — which makes the choice of form matter less than usual, because the company will do nothing else.
A savings and loan association is not a commercial company and does not compare with the others. It is a non-commercial organisation with a special legal status, formed voluntarily by individuals and legal entities, and its name must contain the phrase “Asociația de Economii și Împrumut” or the abbreviation “A.E.Î.”.
