The Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s (ASIC) no-action position on digital asset financial services expires 30 June 2026. It’s the first of two licensing gates – and the gap between them is only 10 months.
From 1 July 2026, any provider of financial services involving digital asset financial products that hasn’t lodged an application for an Australian Financial Services (AFS) licence will be in breach of financial services laws. Market operators and clearing and settlement facility operators face a related requirement: they must have notified ASIC in writing of their intention to apply and held a pre-lodgement meeting. ASIC confirmed the position in a public notice issued 3 May 2026, warning that unlicensed conduct carries civil and criminal penalties including fines of up to 10% of annual turnover.
What the no-action position covered
ASIC’s class no-action letter, first issued 29 October 2025 alongside updated Information Sheet 225 (INFO 225) on digital assets, gave the sector a transitional runway to determine whether their products and services constituted financial products under the Corporations Act 2001 and to prepare licensing applications. The relief was not blanket: it excluded crypto lending and earn products, non-cash payment facilities (other than stablecoins) used for payments, and derivatives other than wrapped tokens.
Under INFO 225, ASIC confirmed that many commonly used digital assets – including stablecoins, wrapped tokens, tokenised securities, and custodial wallets – are already financial products under existing law. That interpretation significantly expanded the population of firms caught by the licensing obligation.
Two gates, not one
The 30 June deadline operates under the existing Corporations Act 2001 licensing regime, not the new Corporations Amendment (Digital Assets Framework) Act 2026 (DAF Act), which passed Parliament on 1 April 2026, received Royal Assent on 8 April 2026, and commences on 9 April 2027. The DAF Act – part of Australia’s broader 2026 implementation wave – introduces two new regulated categories: digital asset platforms (DAPs) and tokenised custody platforms (TCPs), and gives ASIC 18 months to build out the licensing and supervisory framework.
The result is a two-stage transition. Firms that lodge an AFS licence application by 30 June must, from April 2027, lodge a further variation to add DAP or TCP authorisations under the new regime. Those that miss the first gate lose the protection of the no-action position entirely and face enforcement exposure under both the Corporations Act 2001 and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act 2001.
The digital assets deadline is one of several obligations converging on the same week. From 1 July 2026 – the day after ASIC’s no-action position expires – Australia’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF) Tranche 2 regime goes live, bringing roughly 90,000 lawyers, accountants, and real estate agents into the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre’s (AUSTRAC) supervised population for the first time. For regulated entities already stretching to meet multiple commencement dates, the timing is not coincidental: it’s the compound effect of years of deferred reform landing at once. TMR’s June 2026 regulatory update covers the full scope of what goes live on 1 July.
Who’s caught
The scope is broader than crypto exchanges alone. Custodians, providers of financial advice on digital assets, managed funds holding digital asset financial products, and operators of staking or wallet services where the underlying asset is classified as a financial product are all in scope. Foreign companies are also caught and must be registered as a foreign company in Australia with an appointed local agent to have accessed the no-action relief.
ASIC, which launched a new digital portal for AFS licensing in 2025, published its implementation roadmap 20 April 2026, indicating that from October 2027 the new digital assets regime is expected to be fully operational. That means firms that move promptly through the AFS gate now face a further step: full DAF Act compliance roughly 18 months after the Act’s commencement.
