A Money Service Operator (MSO) is a person who, in Hong Kong and as a business, provides a money changing service or a remittance service and must therefore hold an MSO licence granted by the Commissioner of Customs and Excise under Part 5 of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing Ordinance (Cap. 615, AMLO). The licence runs for two years, an application for its grant has cost HK$3,810 plus HK$945 for each person subject to the fit-and-proper test since 15 May 2026, and operating without a licence carries a fine of up to HK$1,000,000 and up to two years’ imprisonment. The feature that sets the MSO apart from Hong Kong’s other AMLO licences is that an MSO is listed as a “financial institution”, so a breach of the customer due diligence duties in Schedule 2 is a criminal offence, not merely a disciplinary matter.
