Pennsylvania HB 2643, a proposed licensing and consumer-protection framework for virtual currency kiosks, appeared in a newly published House calendar. The bill has not been enacted. Nothing in the calendar listing changes the legal obligations of any operator running kiosks in Pennsylvania today.
What makes the listing worth attention is the content of the draft, not its procedural position. HB 2643 would require a dedicated kiosk license from the Department of Banking and Securities — separate from a money transmitter license — cap aggregate transaction charges at the greater of $5 or 3%, throttle daily volume per customer across an operator's entire Pennsylvania fleet, and create a refund right for fraud-induced transactions.
On the two numbers operators care about most, it is the most restrictive kiosk bill currently in play at the state level.
What the Bill Would Require
The provisions below come from the bill text as drafted. They are proposed, not operative law.
HB 2643 as drafted:
- Fee cap: Aggregate transaction charges capped at the greater of $5 or 3%, explicitly including markups, spreads and other charges.
- Daily limits: $500 per day for customers of 30 days or less; $1,000 per day for existing customers. The limit applies across all of an operator's kiosks, not per machine.
- New-customer hold: A new customer's transaction must either be delayed 72 hours or remain cancelable during that period for a full refund of the transaction and fees.
- Fraud refund: Any customer fraudulently induced to transact is entitled to a full refund including fees, if the operator is contacted within 60 days and receives the specified customer information plus a state or local law-enforcement report.
- Licensing: A separate Department of Banking and Securities kiosk license, distinct from money transmission, with separate licenses for the principal office and each branch.
The fee language is the fight
By writing "markups, spreads and other charges" into the cap, the draft closes the gap between an advertised transaction fee and the effective all-in cost of a kiosk purchase. That distinction has driven a substantial share of state attorney general enforcement theories over the past three years.
Exchange-rate spread is where a large share of kiosk revenue has historically sat. A cap that reaches only disclosed fees is trivially easy to route around. This one is not drafted that way — a 3% ceiling that includes spread is a materially different constraint than a 3% ceiling on a fee line.
Daily limits apply fleet-wide
The $500 and $1,000 caps apply on an aggregate basis across an operator's kiosks. A customer cannot reset the cap by driving to the next machine in the same network.
The 72-hour mechanism is a choice, not an option
A new customer's transaction must either be delayed for 72 hours or remain cancelable during that period for a full refund of the transaction and fees. The bill lets operators pick the mechanism. It does not let them skip both.
Licensing Thresholds Are the Real Barrier to Entry
The capital and bonding conditions function as a size filter on who can operate kiosks in Pennsylvania.
A $1 million surety bond and $500,000 tangible net worth are not unusual numbers for a money transmitter regime. Layering them onto a kiosk-specific license creates duplicative bonding exposure for firms already bonded as transmitters.
A company already holding a Pennsylvania money transmitter license would not be grandfathered into kiosk operation. It would need a second, separate authorization with its own net worth test, bond and fees. And because application fees attach per branch, licensing cost scales with footprint rather than functioning as a flat cost of entry — arithmetic that penalizes distributed, low-density fleets.
How This Compares to States That Already Passed Laws
Pennsylvania is not moving in isolation. Connecticut, Virginia, South Dakota and New Hampshire have already enacted kiosk statutes, and the recurring components — licensing, daily caps, fee limits, refund rights, cooling-off periods — are converging into something resembling a national template.
Virginia's law offers the clearest comparison. Codified and effective July 1, 2027, it sets $2,000 and $5,000 transaction limits with a $10,000 monthly ceiling, a 48-hour hold, refund provisions and an 18% fee cap, alongside licensing and blockchain-analytics requirements.
Where the HB 2643 draft diverges from Virginia's enacted law:
- Fee ceiling: HB 2643 proposes the greater of $5 or 3%. Virginia's enacted cap is 18% — a six-fold difference in the permitted take rate at typical ticket sizes.
- Daily limits: HB 2643 proposes $500 for customers of 30 days or less and $1,000 for existing customers. Virginia uses $2,000 and $5,000 transaction limits with a $10,000 monthly ceiling.
- Initial hold: HB 2643 proposes a 72-hour delay-or-cancel right for new customers. Virginia's is 48 hours.
The direction of travel across states has been toward licensing plus limits plus refund rights as a package. What varies sharply is where each legislature sets the numbers. A 3%-inclusive-of-spread cap sits at the restrictive end of anything currently enacted, and it is the single provision most likely to be amended if the bill moves.
Pennsylvania is also arriving after other states have demonstrated that refund statutes produce recoveries rather than paperwork. Arizona's attorney general used that state's kiosk law to secure $171,332 in full refunds for 35 scam victims. A Kansas prosecutor invoked HB 2591 to force a cash refund after an operator initially offered repayment in bitcoin. Those outcomes are the practical argument behind the 60-day refund construction in the Pennsylvania draft.
The Refund Mechanics Deserve Close Reading
HB 2643's fraud-refund provision is conditioned, not automatic. The customer must contact the operator within 60 days, supply specified customer information, and provide a state or local law-enforcement report. Each of those is a gate.
The police-report requirement in particular determines how much of the statute's protective value actually reaches victims. Scam victims frequently delay reporting out of embarrassment, and local police response to crypto-kiosk complaints varies widely by jurisdiction. A 60-day clock that runs from the transaction rather than from discovery of the fraud will exclude a meaningful share of the pig-butchering cases that unfold over months.
Anyone who has already lost money at a kiosk should review consumer protection resources and file a law-enforcement report immediately, regardless of state. Under every enacted framework so far, that report is the document that makes a refund claim viable.
What This Means for Operators
Nothing in HB 2643 binds anyone yet. The compliance-planning questions it raises are concrete:
- Fleet-wide limit enforcement. The $500/$1,000 caps require customer-level aggregation across the entire Pennsylvania footprint in real time. Operators whose limit logic runs per-kiosk or per-session would need architectural changes, not configuration changes.
- Spread-inclusive pricing. If a cap that counts spread as a charge survives amendment, revenue models built on exchange-rate markup rather than disclosed fees do not work in Pennsylvania at all. This is the provision to lobby on or plan around.
- Dual licensing cost. Budget for a second license, a second bond, and per-branch fees on top of any existing money transmitter obligations.
- Refund reserve and intake. A 60-day refund obligation requires a documented process capable of receiving law-enforcement reports and issuing full refunds including fees — in dollars, as the Kansas case made plain.
Operators who waited until enactment in Connecticut and Virginia to build refund workflows discovered that the workflow is the hard part, not the license application.
What Is Not Yet Answered
The calendar appearance is a procedural milestone, not a passage signal. Several questions remain open on the current record:
- When House leadership removes HB 2643 from the table or schedules second consideration, amendments and a final-passage vote.
- Whether any Bitcoin ATM operator or industry trade group formally registers opposition or support. None has been identified in the record to date.
- Whether the fee ceiling, the daily caps and the dual-license requirement survive amendment in their current form.
What to Watch
Fee caps are where kiosk bills get softened. If the greater-of-$5-or-3% ceiling reaches final passage with markups and spreads still inside it, Pennsylvania will have set a materially lower fee benchmark than any enacted state statute — and the next legislature drafting a kiosk bill will have a new number to copy.
Given that the draft's fee ceiling is the most restrictive currently in play, industry silence is unlikely to hold if the bill reaches second consideration. Which number moves first — the fee cap or the daily limit — will tell you who is actually in the room.