Pakistan Sets September 5 Deadline for Crypto Firms to Register

RegulationDigital Finance
โดย Yahoo Finance·PK·Read original
Summary · why it matters

Pakistan's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority has set a September 5 deadline for crypto firms serving customers in the country to begin the new licensing process or shut down. Companies already providing virtual asset services on or before March 5 this year, when the law commenced, are classed as transitional persons and must submit an application for a No Objection Certificate by that date. Operating without submitting an application after the deadline is an offense under Section 70 of the Virtual Assets Act 2026. The portal is also open for full licenses and for a regulatory sandbox, with categories covering exchanges, custody, broker-dealer work, advisory services, lending and borrowing, derivatives, discretionary asset management, transfer and settlement, mining infrastructure, and the issuance of tokens pegged to assets or to a single fiat currency. Applicants must be a company registered in Pakistan under the Companies Act 2017, meet minimum paid-up capital set by category, put directors and key staff through a fit and proper test, and run anti-money laundering systems covering customer checks, transaction monitoring and suspicious activity reporting. Licensed firms must keep customer holdings separate from their own and cannot lend or pledge them without written consent, obligations PVARA said are now legal requirements rather than promises. After the No Objection Certificate is issued, a firm must register with Pakistan's Financial Monitoring Unit, incorporate a local subsidiary, and only then submit the license application, which means offshore exchanges with Pakistani users need a company in the country to continue. Binance and HTX are among those already holding certificates. PVARA was created in July 2025 by presidential ordinance, an emergency measure valid for 120 days, and made permanent by this year's Act. It regulates a market that ranked third in Chainalysis' 2025 global crypto adoption index, and where Islamabad has announced plans for a strategic Bitcoin reserve and in July set up a unit within its Federal Investigation Agency to pursue criminal use of digital assets.

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Off-coverage companies 2

BinancePrivate▼ Negative
Regulationrelevance

Binance must register with Pakistan's new crypto regulator by September 5 or shut down, facing compliance costs and potential operational restrictions.

Huobi Global S.A.Private▼ Negative
Regulationrelevance

Huobi Global must register with Pakistan's new crypto regulator by September 5 or shut down, facing compliance costs and potential operational restrictions.

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