Pakistan has completed a virtual asset licensing framework in under six months, and given existing operators two weeks to apply (Geo News).
The Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA) notified its licensing regulations on Friday and opened its licensing portal.
The deadline
Under Section 70 of the Virtual Assets Act, 2026, anyone who was providing virtual asset services before the Act commenced must submit a no-objection certificate application by September 5, 2026, or cease operations.
Operating without having submitted an application after that date is an offence.
What is being licensed
The regulations establish 10 licence categories: exchange, custody, broker-dealer, advisory, lending and borrowing, derivatives, asset management, transfer and settlement, issuance, and mining-related services.
Each is supported by activity-specific regulations setting out conduct, prudential, technology and anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist-financing requirements.
The protections that matter to holders
Minister of State and PVARA Chairman Bilal Bin Saqib framed the change around custody of customer funds.
Licensed providers “must keep customer holdings separate from their own, cannot lend or pledge them without written consent, and cannot touch them if the platform fails,” he said. “Those will be legal obligations now, not promises.”
Those three rules — segregation, no rehypothecation without consent, and ring-fencing on insolvency — are precisely the protections whose absence has caused the largest losses in global crypto collapses, where customer assets turned out to have been lent out or commingled.
The framing
“A generation of young Pakistanis built this market before the state was ready for it. Today the state catches up,” Saqib said.
“To providers: this is an invitation. Get licensed, get banked, and build something here that lasts. To the young Pakistanis already in this market: you were ahead of the state. Now the state is with you.”
What is not yet known
The reported announcement does not set out licence fees, capital requirements, how long PVARA expects approvals to take, or what happens to customer assets held by an operator that misses the September 5 deadline and must stop trading.
That last question is the practical one for anyone currently holding assets on a Pakistani platform.
