What the sector pays and who the companies are
This page crosses two statistical worlds, and neither describes it on its own.
In financial services — division 64, home to non-bank lending and leasing — 384 businesses reported through their financial statements in 2025, with around 2,500 people and sales revenue of about 4.6 billion lei. The same division shows almost 13,000 employees in the employment statistics, which covers every employer in the division, banks included. The two series measure different populations and cannot be added together.
The trade side of the page reads much more simply. Retail paid around 13,300 lei gross a month at the end of 2025, below the national average of about 16,400. A jewellery shop or a pawnshop counter has a shop’s payroll, however expensive the goods on the shelf.
The register shows most clearly how crowded the lending side is. On 9 September 2026, the Register of Authorised Non-Bank Lending Organisations held 198 entries: 108 active organisations, 3 with activity suspended, 6 in liquidation and 81 struck off. More than two in five of the organisations that ever entered the register have left it.
Why these three trades are kept apart
Because the legal regime does not follow business logic.
A pawnshop lends money against a pledge — economically, it is lending. Legally, it is licensed together with the workshops and shops that deal in precious metal articles, under a single permit issued by the Public Services Agency, and its minimum capital depends on the locality.
A non-bank lending organisation does the same thing without a gold pledge, and gets no licence at all: it gets an approval from the National Bank before it is registered, and then enters a register. The capital threshold is four times higher than for a pawnshop in a municipality, and its directors must have the qualifications and experience written into the law.
The precious metals chain, finally, has nothing to do with lending, but shares a licence with pawnshops because the state is tracking the same thing in both: where the gold comes from and where it ends up.
That sets the order of decisions. First you settle whether you will take precious metal articles in pledge, because that single detail decides whether you go to the Public Services Agency or to the National Bank — and with it the capital, the deadline and the file.
What it costs to open
On the licence side, the cost is predictable: a 3,250 lei fee, or 1,625 if the company was registered no more than a year before the application. The licence is issued for an unlimited term.
Capital is the part that hurts. For a pawnshop, 250,000 lei in municipalities or 150,000 in villages, proven by documents attached to the file. For a non-bank lending organisation, a million lei, paid in full in cash at state registration — plus the permanent obligation to keep regulated capital of at least 5% of assets. The National Bank’s approval costs 2,000 lei.
Equipment comes on top, but only in the precious metals branch: safes, interior and exterior alarms linked to a central security station, analytical or electronic scales with annual metrological verification, chemical reagents and testing instruments. The law requires no equipment for non-bank lending, but it does require an office in an administrative building, on the ground floor of a residential building or in another permanent structure.
And where goods are sold at retail, there is the notification of the start of trading to the local town hall, for each retail unit, with a notification fee of 100 lei.
The tax regime is chosen as for any company, according to turnover and headcount.
What to know before you start
The wording in the law is narrow and worth reading exactly: among the licensed activities is “operating pawnshops that take articles of precious metals and precious stones in pledge”. The licence is not written for every kind of pawnshop, only for the one that takes gold and stones.
The consequence is that the business model decides the permit, not the other way round. If you take electronics, tools or musical instruments in pledge, you are not covered by the text of this licence — but you enter the zone where the National Bank is the only authority that can say whether what you do is professional non-bank lending. The question needs asking before you sign the lease.
The approval comes before the company, and approved documents stay as they are
In non-bank lending, the order is the reverse of an ordinary company: you apply to the National Bank for approval with the articles of association in their final form, and the registration authority then receives the approval together with those documents, without any later changes to them relating to the requirements of the law.
In practice, the articles are written once and written correctly. A change made after the approval to provisions governed by the non-bank lending law can lead to entry in the register being refused — which means a registered company that is not allowed to lend.
The director needs qualifications and experience, and the authority’s silence counts
A member of the executive body and a branch or secondary-office head of a non-bank lending organisation must hold a university degree in economics, law or the exact sciences and have at least two years’ experience in economics and finance or in law. Someone with a degree in another field makes up for it with two extra years of experience.
The way into office is unusual and works in the company’s favour. Directors may exercise their powers from the date the supervisor takes note of their appointment on the basis of the file filed; the supervisor has 10 working days to ask for more or to object, and if the deadline passes with no further request, it is deemed to have taken note. The file is filed within 20 working days of election or appointment at most.
State hallmarking is not optional, not even for imports
Articles of precious metals made in the Republic of Moldova and those brought into the country for sale must carry the state hallmark. The rule catches the pawnshop too: articles taken on a pawn ticket, on consignment or on a purchase receipt may be sold only after assay and hallmarking.
For a company that builds its stock from purchases from the public, that means an extra step between the back shelf and the window, with its own tariffs. From 1 January 2027, the list of those services and the tariffs are approved by the Ministry of Finance, and the Government keeps the calculation methodology.
A licensing step disappeared at the end of 2025
Until 30 December 2025, for making and repairing articles of precious metals and for processing scrap, the licensing authority informed the Environmental Protection Inspectorate the same day, and the inspectorate had 7 working days to respond with a notification or an inspection report; silence meant tacit approval.
Both paragraphs have been repealed. The procedure now has one step fewer, and guides written before 2026 still contain it. The environmental requirements for manufacturing premises remain in force — what went was the procedural step, not the substantive condition.
The answer differs by branch: for lending the law gives it outright, for pawnshops the share-capital requirement dictates it.
In non-bank lending, the form is written into the definition: a non-bank lending organisation is a joint-stock company or a limited liability company. For most founders the LLC is the natural choice, and a joint-stock company only becomes relevant once investors arrive who want shares.
For a pawnshop, the threshold is phrased in the law as “share capital”, which presupposes a company with share capital — something a sole trader’s business does not have. In practice, the answer is an LLC.
For jewellery workshops and shops, the law also admits individual entrepreneurs, so a sole trader can obtain the licence. But a sole trader’s business is not a legal entity, and the owner is liable without limit, with all their personal assets. In a trade where your safe holds expensive stock or someone else’s property, that exposure is not theoretical, which is why the LLC remains the recommended form here too.
