What is the Money Transmission Modernization Act?

The model law targets the expensive part of nationwide licensing: inconsistency. It standardizes the definition of money transmission and the exemption list, including an agent-of-payee exemption, sets a uniform tangible net worth formula and a common permissible investments regime, harmonizes change-of-control procedures, and gives adopting states express authority for coordinated multistate licensing and joint examinations. An optional virtual currency article lets adopting states bring digital asset transmission under the same framework.

For a licensee, adoption makes classification analysis transfer across states, consolidates prudential math, and replaces many shallow exams with coordinated ones. What it does not do is create a single national license: the state-by-state filing, bonding, and renewal work remains, and what is actually law anywhere is that state's enacted version, since adoption ranges from near-complete to selective. Our full explainer is at /money-transmission-modernization-act, and each state's current statute, regulator, and requirements are tracked at /mtl-state-laws.