What does it mean that the movement of money is a licensed activity?

When someone says the movement of money is a licensed activity, it means that money, when it moves internationally, domestically, or both, is actually moving from institution to institution: from provider to provider, from one payment trail to another, from one bank to another. All these institutions are licensed.

If you were to have a Bob in Chicago, USA, sending money across to someone halfway across the world, to someone in Cairo, Ahmed in Egypt, that movement of money, if you were to play it like a movie, goes like this:

1. Bob had his money.
2. Bob sends his money and it goes to, let's say, New York.
3. From a correspondent bank in New York it goes to London.
4. From a correspondent bank in London it goes to Cairo.
5. From Cairo it goes to the one other bank where Ahmed has his bank and then it gets credited.

At all stages, at all points in time, if you were to play this movie and pause it at any point in time and ask, "Who has the money?" whoever has the money has a license as well to operate that activity.

When someone says the movement of money is a licensed activity, that means if you want to move money you need to be licensed by the local regulator in the jurisdiction you operate in or in the jurisdictions you want to operate in, which may not be local. That's what it means.

Through and through the movement of money, everyone has to be licensed in the chain. If someone is unlicensed the chain breaks and money movement stops.