Australia’s securities regulator has given crypto businesses a hard deadline: apply for a financial services license by Sept. 30 or risk operating illegally. Penalties could include fines reaching 10% of annual turnover, along with civil or criminal action.
ASIC said on Sept. 3 that firms relying on its temporary enforcement relief must submit an Australian Financial Services license application, or seek changes to an existing license, before the cutoff. Cointelegraph reported the announcement. Firms needing market or clearing and settlement licenses must also notify the regulator and hold a pre-application meeting. Any crypto platform still trading under the regulator’s no-action position on Oct. 1 would be doing so in breach of financial services law.
That no-action position is a form of temporary forbearance. ASIC agreed not to enforce against firms operating in good faith toward licensing. It expires Sept. 30.
Fines of up to 10% of annual turnover are the headline penalty ASIC has flagged for unlicensed operators. Civil and criminal penalties are also on the table. The regulator did not name specific firms in the Sept. 3 statement.
More than 45 digital asset-related license applications have landed at ASIC since it updated its guidance in October 2025, according to the report. When ASIC extended the relief period on June 25, pushing it from June 30 to Sept. 30 and broadening it to cover crypto businesses operating as authorized representatives of licensed firms or through certain intermediary arrangements, it said it had received about 30 applications. Roughly 15 have been filed in the nine weeks since.
The licensing push sits apart from Australia’s broader Digital Asset Framework. That regime takes effect April 9, 2027 and mandates a separate exchange-licensing system. The Sept. 30 cutoff concerns firms falling under existing financial services law right now. Companies that miss it would still have to answer to the framework next year, but the immediate exposure runs through the current licensing regime ASIC already polices.
June’s extension was the second time ASIC gave crypto firms more runway. The original relief window was set to close at the end of June before the nine-week reprieve.
Australia has separately shown it will act against unlicensed crypto operators. Earlier this year, the regulator ordered Bitcoin ATM operator Cryptolink to take its machines offline over basic reporting failures. The move made clear the no-action position was never a blank check.
What remains unclear is how many of those 45-plus applications ASIC will process before Sept. 30, and whether firms with pending applications count as compliant once the deadline passes. The regulator has not publicly set a processing target. Firms still evaluating whether their business model requires an AFS license, a market license, or a clearing and settlement license face that classification question with less than a month left.
