Japan’s Financial Services Agency has registered Laser Digital, the digital asset subsidiary of Nomura Group, as a crypto asset exchange service provider under the Payment Services Act. The approval is the first the regulator has handed out in roughly four years.
An FSA list published Friday added Laser Digital as a newly approved operator. The last platform to clear the FSA was Binance Japan, in October 2022. Nothing has come through in the intervening period.
The rollout is phased. Laser Digital starts by supplying domestic liquidity to crypto providers. From there, the plan is to expand into institutional crypto trading services, according to Cointelegraph. The company has not disclosed a launch date for the institutional trading phase. The specific assets it will support have not been named either.
Jez Mohideen, co-founder and CEO of Laser Digital, said in a Friday press release that Japan’s crypto market is entering a “new phase of maturity,” creating a need for “trusted counterparties and infrastructure” as “institutional investors increase their interest in this asset class.” That is an outlook, not a figure. Laser did not attach a revenue projection or trading-volume target to the approval.
The registration arrives alongside a structural shift in how Japan regulates digital assets. In July, parliament passed revisions that reclassify crypto assets as financial assets under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act (FIEA). Primary oversight moves away from the Payment Services Act, where digital assets are currently treated mainly as payment instruments.
The amendments also bring in insider trading rules and stronger supervision for crypto businesses. In practice, token markets would face requirements closer to those governing securities.
Those crypto provisions take effect on a date set by Cabinet order within one year of the amendments’ July 23 promulgation. Until then, Laser Digital and other operators stay under the Payment Services Act framework.
Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama signaled the intent to bring crypto under the same regulatory umbrella as traditional finance assets in January. The move, she said, would let citizens “benefit from digital and blockchain-based assets.”
Here is the part that is new. The FSA has not issued a public statement on whether Laser Digital’s clearance signals a broader reopening of Japan’s licensing pipeline. No second approval is publicly pending. Whether the four-year gap closes here or continues, the regulator has not addressed.
The CoinDesk source listed for this story was not parseable at the time of writing. The account above is drawn from Cointelegraph and the FSA’s own published list.
