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Back to topUnder a new regulation, Indonesian businesses can now open trading accounts to invest in crypto assets, with immediate effect.
On 16 October 2024, Indonesia’s Commodity Futures Trading Regulatory Agency (Badan Pengawas Perdagangan Berjangka Komoditi or Bappebti) issued its third amendment to Bappebti Regulation No. 8 of 2021 on Guidelines for the Implementation of Physical Crypto Asset Trading on Futures Exchanges (the Amendment).
One key change introduced by the Amendment is that non-individuals (ie businesses and legal entities) are now allowed to become customers of crypto asset traders and therefore open crypto trading accounts in Indonesia. Before the Amendment, only individuals were allowed to open crypto trading accounts.
However, crypto asset traders must satisfy certain requirements before onboarding non-individuals as customers, including having the necessary systems in place to implement know-your-transaction (KYT) principles. Crypto asset traders must also ensure that their non-individual customers satisfy various requirements, which include providing a statement letter confirming that (i) their trading activities are solely for investment purposes and (ii) they are using their own funds for trading.
Related requirements for crypto traders include a cooperation agreement with Indonesia’s Ministry of Home Affairs to access population data to, among other things, prevent anti-money laundering (AML) activities and verify customer data, which covers both individual and corporate customers. Without this cooperation agreement, Bappebti may limit the activities of the crypto trader, by, for instance, requiring that they only accept individual customers, or limiting the maximum funds that can be placed by a customer to 25 million rupiah (US$1,700).
As mentioned in a previous legal update, Law No. 4 of 2023 on the Development and Strengthening of the Financial Services Sector (also known as the Financial Services Omnibus Law) mandated Indonesia’s Financial Services Authority (OJK) to supervise all digital financial assets, including crypto assets. Since transfer of the supervision of crypto assets from Bappebti to OJK should be completed by January 2025, OJK recently prepared a new draft regulation on the Trading of Digital Financial Assets including Crypto Assets (the Draft OJK Crypto Regulation), which was made available on 27 August 2024. However, the draft regulation did not allow for crypto asset traders (or “Digital Financial Asset Traders” as defined under the Draft OJK Crypto Regulation) to onboard non-individual customers.
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We are monitoring this space closely, and will share any further updates from Bappebti and OJK as they occur.
