I'll have to look up the Ohio minimum, but seems like for less than the cost of one bitcoin ATM ($5k), I might be able to get licensed & start selling bitcoins!
The cost of the license is usually trivial however most states require a surety bond and certain capitalization requirements. Those are pretty tough. You may wonder why the state wants the company to have large amounts of funds AND a surety bond in case something goes wrong. The reason (or at least stated reason) is that States don't regulate MT for AML or KYC reasons they regulate them in the name of consumer protection. Take your billpay provider as an example. Say you use your billpay provider to pay your mortgage. Well the reality is you don't pay your mortgage. You give money to the billpay provider in return for the promise to pay your mortgage company. Now imagine they don't and just disappear with the money. Oops your mortgage is now delinquent. Now worst case scenario you can't afford to make a second payment so your home goes into foreclosure. Now that is extreme but traditionally MT have been an entity which acts as a middle man between TWO PARTIES (i.e. Sally uses WU to pay John). FinCEN guidance tries to cram exchanging virtual currency into MT but the states are more concerned about ensuring that if a MT fails that there are funds to compensate victims who's payments "disappear".
