Short answer
Search the company's legal name in FinCEN's free public MSB Registrant Search on fincen.gov. A listing shows the registrant's name, registration number, registered MSB activities, and states of operation. Remember what it proves: federal registration is a notice filing, not a license, so check state money transmitter licenses separately through NMLS Consumer Access. A business absent from both is a red flag; an agent of a registered MSB legitimately appears only under its principal.
The FinCEN registry is refreshed periodically from accepted Form 107 filings and needs no account. Search by legal name, state, or MSB activity, and try the parent entity's name before concluding anything, since many brands register under a different corporate name. A very recent registration may lag the refresh; a long-operating business that never appears is the real warning sign.
The second half of diligence is the state layer: NMLS Consumer Access lists each state money transmitter license a company holds, with numbers and status. The gap to look for is between the states a company serves and the states it is licensed in. Our full walkthrough of both lookups, what each result proves, and what to do when a business does not check out is at /verify-msb-registration, with each state's regulator and statute at /mtl-state-laws.
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