The number of crypto asset service providers (CASPs) registered with the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) grew by 26% to 362 in 2025/26, while a surge in reporting from the sector helped the FIC to exceed its target for illicit-financial-flow reports.
The registered CASP population increased from 287 at the end of the previous financial year, according to the FIC’s annual report, published on 30 September 2026. Its growth outpaced the 8.8% increase in the FIC’s total registered population, although CASPs accounted for only about 0.6% of the 60 115 institutions and other reporters registered at year-end.
The FIC said an unexpected surge in reporting from CASPs helped it produce 140 illicit-financial-flow reports, more than three times its annual target of 45. Accelerated processing of matters already in its pipeline also contributed to the target being exceeded.
The annual report does not say that all 140 reports concerned crypto assets. It identifies increased reporting from CASPs as one reason for the overachievement.
CASPs have been accountable institutions under the Financial Intelligence Centre Act (FICA) since amendments to Schedule 1 took effect in December 2022. Their obligations include registering with the FIC, conducting customer due diligence, maintaining a Risk Management and Compliance Programme (RMCP), keeping prescribed records, and submitting regulatory reports.
Crypto assets were also declared financial products by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority in October 2022, bringing CASPs within the FSCA’s licensing regime as well as the registration, reporting, and anti-money-laundering obligations administered by the FIC.
CASPs submit 5 171 regulatory reports
The FIC received 5 171 regulatory reports from CASPs during 2025/26. Of these, 5 162, or 99.8%, were suspicious and unusual transaction reports, while nine were cash threshold reports.
CASPs accounted for less than 0.05% of the 10.86 million regulatory reports received across all sectors. Cross-border money or value transfer service providers submitted nearly 5.91m reports, while banks accounted for about 4.56m.
Raw sector totals are not directly comparable because accountable institutions submit different categories of reports according to their activities and reporting obligations. The CASP total consisted almost entirely of suspicious and unusual transaction reports, whereas the totals for banks and cross-border transfer providers included large volumes of other prescribed reports.
The FIC produced 140 illicit-financial-flow reports during 2025/26, compared with 51 in the previous year. These reports are issued to law enforcement agencies and other competent authorities to support the investigation of illicit financial flows.
Risk and compliance return submission rate stands at 49%
The FIC received risk and compliance returns from 176 of the 362 registered CASPs used in its Directive 7 calculation, giving the sector a submission rate of 49%.
At 49%, the CASP submission rate was joint-lowest among the sectors covered by Directive 7, matching the rate for dealers in other high-value goods.
The returns provide information that the FIC uses to assess institutions’ exposure to money-laundering, terrorist-financing, and proliferation-financing risks and to tailor its supervisory response.
Directive 7 covered the period from 1 January to 30 June 2023 and applied to sectors added as accountable institutions in December 2022. Because the number of institutions registered in these sectors at 30 June 2023 was insufficient to provide a benchmark, the FIC used the population registered at 31 March 2026 to calculate the submission percentages.
The table’s heading contains a 31 March 2025 date, although its footnote states that the percentages are measured against the population registered at 31 March 2026. The figure of 362 corresponds to the CASP population registered at 31 March 2026.
The 49% rate is not directly comparable with the submission rates reported under Directive 6, which uses a different registration benchmark and reporting period.
CASPs face inspections and compliance reviews
The FIC issued 10 risk-based inspection reports involving CASPs during 2025/26, a small portion of the 549 inspection reports it issued during the year.
The number should not be interpreted as a measure of CASPs’ relative compliance compared with other sectors. The FIC selected institutions mainly through its analysis of risk and compliance returns, primarily targeting those assessed as presenting higher risks rather than allocating inspections according to each sector’s share of registrations.
Across the sectors supervised by the FIC, 171 institutions inspected during the year were deemed high risk because they had not submitted risk and compliance returns. The annual report does not disclose how many of these institutions were CASPs.
The report also does not provide separate findings for the CASPs inspected. Across the full inspection population, recurring deficiencies involved RMCPs, customer due diligence, registration information, and documented evidence of targeted financial sanctions screening.
The FIC conducted eight compliance reviews of CASPs, out of 161 reviews conducted across the sectors it supervises. Compliance reviews are distinct from inspections and are intended to increase awareness and improve institutions’ compliance with their FICA obligations.
The FSCA separately issued 10 inspection reports involving CASPs during the year. These should not be confused with the 10 CASP inspection reports issued by the FIC. The annual report does not establish whether the two sets of inspections involved the same businesses.
The FIC also received 173 RMCPs from CASPs during the year. This does not mean that only 173 of the 362 registered providers had an RMCP, because the report records programmes submitted to the FIC during the reporting period rather than the total number maintained by the sector.
Travel rule takes effect
In addition to the general FICA obligations applying to accountable institutions, CASPs must comply with the information and record-keeping requirements in Directive 9 when transferring or receiving crypto assets for customers.
The directive, which deals with the crypto travel rule, took effect on 30 April 2025.
It requires prescribed information to accompany crypto asset transfers and receipts undertaken for or on behalf of customers, and related records to be kept. Information held by ordering and beneficiary CASPs must be available to competent authorities on request.
Directive 9 sets out the obligations and information requirements for CASPs involved at the ordering, intermediary, and recipient stages of crypto asset transactions. A CASP that fails to comply with the directive is non-compliant and is subject to an administrative sanction in accordance with section 45C of FICA.
The FIC issued Public Compliance Communication 61 on 30 March 2026, providing practical guidance to CASPs on implementing the travel rule.
The annual report says the FIC has implemented all of the anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist-financing recommendations directed to it in the Intergovernmental Fintech Working Group’s 2021 position paper on crypto assets. These included bringing CASPs into the accountable-institution framework and issuing the travel-rule directive.
Crypto regulatory work continues
The FIC participates in the Intergovernmental Fintech Working Group’s (IFWG’s) Crypto Assets Regulatory Working Group and its Innovation Hub.
Work on foreign-currency-pegged stablecoins continued within the Crypto Assets Regulatory Working Group during 2025/26.
Separately, the IFWG published a second discussion paper on stablecoin arrangements in March 2026. It examined rand-pegged stablecoin arrangements in South Africa and whether these crypto assets could be incorporated into existing financial regulatory frameworks.
