Each month our finance writers round up the top regulatory announcements and compliance changes to ensure our clients stay informed. We follow regulatory news and updates from ASIC, CySEC, MFSA, FCA, FSA, FRB, SEC, MiFID II to produce compliant content marketing for our clients. Here’s our financial regulations roundup for September 2026.
August was a busy month for financial regulations. The month delivered the United States’ first real attempt at a bespoke crypto securities framework, another delay for one of South Korea’s most closely watched stablecoin bills, and a wave of cross border crypto rulemaking announcements.
SEC Proposes Regulation Crypto Assets
The SEC unveiled Regulation Crypto Assets, its first attempt at a dedicated offering framework for crypto investment contracts, arriving days after the Commission had abruptly scrapped a meeting meant to vote on the same proposal. The plan creates two exemptions from full securities registration, a startup exemption capped at $5 million over a four year period and a broader fundraising exemption allowing up to $75 million a year, plus a conditional safe harbour once a project’s founders have wound down their managerial role.
Chairman Paul Atkins framed the move as building on the Commission’s earlier interpretive guidance while Congress continues working through its own market structure legislation. The proposal is now open for public comment, and how the industry responds will likely shape how far the SEC is willing to push further crypto rulemaking from here.
Treasury Opens the Stablecoin Rulebook for Comment
Treasury published its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking under the GENIUS Act, setting out who may lawfully issue, offer and sell payment stablecoins to US persons. The rules are meant to close gaps left by last year’s law, but they land well behind schedule. The statute’s own deadline for final rules has already lapsed, pushing its fallback issuance ban out to early next year, and the OCC is still finalizing a parallel rulebook of its own.
Until both sets of rules land, issuers remain in an odd position, operating under interim guidance for a law that has technically been in force for over a year.
The GENIUS Act is the only major regulation passed in Congress and signed into law by President Trump. It focused on stablecoins, with the CLARITY Act facing another delay in the Senate.
The Clarity Act Hits the Recess Wall Again
Crypto’s market structure bill missed its window once more. The Senate adjourned for its August recess without a floor vote on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, even after leadership filed cloture just before leaving town to guarantee a procedural vote once the chamber returns. Ethics provisions tied to officials’ crypto holdings, along with unresolved questions on DeFi and stablecoin yield, remain the sticking points holding a bipartisan deal together.
Prediction markets marked down the odds of passage sharply after the delay was confirmed. With only a narrow legislative window left before campaign season crowds out the calendar, the bill’s early autumn procedural vote now looks like a real test of whether it survives the year.
Brussels Asks Whether MiCA Still Fits
The European Commission wrapped up its targeted consultation on reviewing MiCA, gathering feedback from banks, crypto asset firms, national regulators and central banks on whether the regulation’s scope still matches the market it was built for.
The consultation focused heavily on activities MiCA doesn’t currently reach, including DeFi, staking, lending and prediction markets, and will feed into a formal report to Parliament next year that could arrive with its own legislative proposal attached.
Coming so soon after national transitional periods closed across the bloc, the timing of the review is itself a signal that Brussels already sees gaps worth revisiting.
UK Banks Face Questions Over Crypto Access
With the FCA’s full cryptoasset authorization regime edging closer, UK lawmakers pressed major bank chief executives on whether their institutions plan to change how they treat licensed digital asset firms once the new regime is live.
The letter from the Crypto and Digital Assets All Party Parliamentary Group followed persistent complaints from exchanges, custodians and stablecoin issuers about being refused basic banking services, something the group’s co-chairs warned could undercut the new regime before it even gets going.
South Korea Tightens the Crypto Travel Rule
South Korea’s Cabinet approved changes scrapping the long-standing minimum threshold for the crypto travel rule, meaning every transfer between registered virtual asset service providers, regardless of size, now triggers sender and recipient information sharing.
The amendment also toughens screening for VASP registration, extending major shareholder reviews to anyone who effectively controls a firm’s board and tightening debt ratio standards, part of a broader push to bring Korean exchanges into line with FATF expectations ahead of the country’s next mutual evaluation.
Meanwhile, Korea’s push to legislate a won denominated stablecoin ran into another delay. A National Assembly forum reaffirmed political appetite for the Digital Asset Framework Act, but the ruling party’s task force is being reshuffled following its summer convention, pushing formal bill introduction into the following month.
The holdup centers on familiar sticking points, chiefly who gets to issue a won stablecoin and how much equity fintech firms should be allowed to hold in bank led consortiums, with the Bank of Korea continuing to push for a bank anchored issuance structure over a more fintech friendly one.
Japan Stands Up a Dedicated Crypto Regulator
Japan’s FSA opened a dedicated Crypto Assets and Stablecoins Division under its restructured Asset Management and Insurance Supervision Bureau, consolidating oversight that had previously been scattered across smaller sub offices.
The new division arrived alongside a separate decision to scrap the transaction cap that had confined licensed Type 2 stablecoin providers, JPYC among them, to micropayment sized transfers, a pairing the FSA framed as expanding institutional access only once it had the supervisory capacity to handle it.
The agency also requested a tax filing exemption for trust based stablecoins, arguing that reporting every change of beneficiary makes little sense for tokens designed to move constantly between users.
Japan’s FSA, the Ministry of Finance, the Bank of Japan and the country’s three megabanks confirmed they are studying a national blockchain settlement system for stocks and government bonds, aiming to collapse today’s one-to-two-day settlement cycles into something closer to real time. The plan would tokenize a portion of banks’ reserve accounts at the central bank rather than create a retail digital currency, building on pilot projects the megabanks and major securities firms already have underway.
Australia’s Crypto Licensing Clock Keeps Ticking
Australia’s multi track crypto overhaul kept grinding forward, with firms offering digital asset financial services racing to prepare Australian Financial Services Licence applications before ASIC’s no action relief runs out.
On the market structure side, ASIC also floated raising the transaction value threshold for low volume financial markets, a smaller but telling sign of the regulator’s broader push, discussed at its recent Financial Markets and Innovation Roundtable, to modernize market infrastructure and explore tokenizing Austraclear.
New Zealand Unveils Its Final AML Overhaul
Wellington introduced the last of its four part overhaul of anti money laundering law, described by the government as the most substantial rewrite since the regime began.
The Omnibus bill gives officials a regulation making power to address crypto ATMs directly, a lighter touch alternative to the outright ban once floated, while also simplifying customer due diligence for low risk situations and giving the Financial Intelligence Unit stronger tools to freeze suspicious transactions.
South Africa Moves Toward Cross Border Crypto Rules
The South African Reserve Bank’s surveillance department published a draft manual setting out how crypto asset flows into and out of the country would be formally regulated, introducing a new category of Authorised Crypto Asset Service Providers that would need National Treasury sign off to handle cross border transactions.
The framework would treat transfers to offshore wallets or exchanges as capital movements reportable under exchange control, folding crypto directly into the same allowances, including the discretionary and foreign capital allowances, that already govern how much money South Africans can move offshore.
Alongside it, the Financial Intelligence Centre rolled out new location reporting requirements for crypto firms and other accountable institutions, and refreshed its guidance on customer due diligence and beneficial ownership.
Regulations Roundup is produced by our team of writers and analysts. Contentworks is a financial content agency that works with forex brokers, fintechs, banks and payment providers. If you’re looking for expert financial marketing, book a free Zoom with our team.