Crypto Overview in Papua New Guinea

Regulatory data is for informational purposes only and may not reflect the most current legal developments. Always consult qualified professionals before making decisions.

Legal Classification and Regulatory Framework

Cryptocurrency Status

Cryptocurrency is legal but unregulated in Papua New Guinea. The country has no dedicated virtual asset statute and no licensing pathway has been operationalised for crypto exchanges, custodians, or token issuers. The Papua New Guinea kina is the sole legal tender under the Central Banking Act 2000. The Bank of Papua New Guinea (BPNG) has issued repeated public notices declaring that virtual currencies, including Bitcoin and Ether, are neither issued nor regulated by the central bank and carry no legal-tender status. Governor Elizabeth Genia stated publicly that the BPNG licenses no virtual asset service providers, no cryptocurrency-based investment platforms, and no fast-money schemes, and that operating such a business without authorisation breaches the country’s financial-services legislation.

The Securities Commission of Papua New Guinea (SCPNG), established as an independent statutory body under the Securities Commission Act 2015 and operating under the Capital Markets Act 2015 (in force from December 2017), has categorised crypto assets as tradeable financial products alongside equities, bonds, and derivatives. The commission has issued investor-protection alerts on suspected crypto scams and, in January 2025, launched a dedicated Investment Scam Alert Reporting Form. No implementing rules governing a licensing perimeter for virtual asset activity have been published under the capital markets framework, and the practical effect is that the sector sits in a grey zone: neither approved through a defined route nor formally prohibited for users.

Tax Treatment

The Internal Revenue Commission (IRC) has not issued crypto-specific tax guidance. General principles under the Income Tax Act apply: corporate income tax is 30 percent for resident companies and 48 percent for non-resident branches, personal income tax is progressive up to 42 percent, and goods and services tax is levied at 10 percent. There is no standalone capital gains tax, though gains arising from a business or trading activity can be assessed as ordinary income. Non-residents are taxed only on Papua New Guinea-sourced income. In the absence of formal rulings, operators and individuals dealing in cryptocurrency should obtain qualified local tax advice.

Regulatory Oversight

The Bank of Papua New Guinea is the central bank and primary issuer of public guidance on virtual assets; it hosts the Financial Analysis and Supervision Unit (FASU), the country’s designated financial intelligence unit. The Securities Commission of Papua New Guinea regulates capital markets under the Capital Markets Act 2015. The Internal Revenue Commission administers tax policy, the Investment Promotion Authority (IPA) handles company registration and foreign investment, and the Sanctions Secretariat implements United Nations sanctions. The overlapping jurisdictions of BPNG and SCPNG leave the regulatory perimeter on virtual assets unsettled: central bank advisories pull toward restriction while the capital markets statute implies a latent supervisory category.

Business Environment

Banking Relationships

The banking sector is dominated by BSP Financial Group alongside Kina Bank, Westpac PNG, ANZ PNG, and MiBank. BSP has publicly stated it does not accept cryptocurrency transactions, citing the absence of consumer protection and alignment with central bank warnings. Correspondent banking has been under sustained pressure across the Pacific, with regional banks investing significantly in enhanced anti-money-laundering capacity following enforcement actions. An Australian Pacific Banking Guarantee facility has been advanced as a partial response to de-risking dynamics, though local commentary has raised competitive-coverage concerns. Papua New Guinea’s addition to the FATF grey list in February 2026 adds further friction to correspondent relationships and cross-border settlement for any fintech or crypto-adjacent operator seeking a domestic banking partner.

Innovation Support

The Bank of Papua New Guinea operates a regulatory sandbox for fintech experimentation, open to local and overseas applicants, typically in partnership with a licensed financial institution. The Centre for Excellence in Financial Inclusion coordinates broader inclusion work. In November 2025, the government launched a national digital identity programme branded SevisPass and its companion app SevisWallet, built on TECH5’s T5-OmniTrust biometric platform, making Papua New Guinea the first decentralised Digital Public Infrastructure ecosystem in Oceania. Integrations with MiBank and superannuation funds followed, and in January 2026 a regulation was introduced making SevisPass mandatory for SIM card registration. Separately, the BPNG, in collaboration with Japanese partners Soramitsu and Mitsubishi and supported by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, completed a digital kina proof of concept in January 2025 using the SORA v3 / Hyperledger Iroha 2 permissioned blockchain, testing instantaneous payments, P2P remittances, and fund-recovery features. Governor Genia described the PoC as “an important first step but only the beginning,” and next steps remain exploratory, contingent on legal and infrastructure groundwork.

Crypto License in Papua New Guinea

There is no crypto license in Papua New Guinea. The country has no operational virtual asset service provider regime under either the central bank or the capital markets framework, and no formal pathway exists through which an exchange, custodian, broker, or token issuer can obtain domestic authorisation to serve Papua New Guinea-based users.

Current Status

The Bank of Papua New Guinea licenses no virtual asset service providers. The Securities Commission of Papua New Guinea has classified crypto assets as a category of tradeable financial instrument under the Capital Markets Act 2015, but implementing rules creating a VASP licensing perimeter have not been published. Both regulators have issued public warnings about unlicensed crypto platforms, and the BPNG’s published advisories characterise operating a crypto business without authorisation as a breach of national financial-services laws. In February 2026 FATF grey-listed Papua New Guinea after the September 2024 APG Mutual Evaluation Report identified significant effectiveness gaps in AML/CFT supervision, which further reduces the likelihood of a supervised licensing market emerging in the short term. Any provider currently active in the market is operating without authorisation and faces regulatory and enforcement exposure.

Why No Framework

Several structural factors explain the absence of a licensing regime. The country has only five successful money-laundering prosecutions on record since its first AML/CFT law in 2005, and the 2024 APG Mutual Evaluation Report recorded zero Highly Effective and zero Substantially Effective ratings across the eleven immediate outcomes, demonstrating that the basic supervisory architecture for conventional finance has not yet reached consistent operational effectiveness. Extending that architecture to virtual assets, a higher-complexity category requiring specialist technical and forensic capacity, is not a realistic near-term objective under current resource constraints. The FATF action plan endorsed at the February 2026 plenary prioritises the endorsement of the National AML/CFT/CPF Strategic Plan, improved understanding of money-laundering risk, strengthened international cooperation, and risk-based supervision of banks, money or value transfer services, and foreign exchange dealers: virtual asset supervision is not listed among the priority commitments. The central bank’s own public communications have consistently signalled restriction over supervised opening.

What Operators Should Know

Operators targeting Papua New Guinean users from overseas must apply their own home-jurisdiction AML/CFT and VASP registration requirements. There is no local license to obtain and no sandbox pathway that results in a VASP authorisation. The SCPNG’s investor-protection remit means that token offerings with characteristics of securities face exposure under the Capital Markets Act 2015 regardless of the absence of published implementing rules. Papua New Guinea’s FATF grey-list status means counterparties and correspondent banks subject to enhanced-due-diligence obligations for grey-list jurisdictions will apply heightened scrutiny to transactions involving Papua New Guinean accounts or entities. The autonomous Bougainville region announced the Bougainville Offshore Financial Authority (BOFA) in December 2025 and has indicated it will issue VASP licenses, but the status of that framework is at an early declaratory stage and Papua New Guinea tax law continues to apply across the full territory.

Market Characteristics

Adoption Patterns

Formal cryptocurrency adoption is limited. The country has an unbanked rate of approximately 85 percent, internet penetration of around 30 percent, and a mobile coverage profile that increasingly supports digital financial services. Mobile money rails, particularly MiCash through MiBank and services on the Digicel network, are the principal channels for everyday digital payments. Remittance corridors with Australia carry above-average fees by global standards, and informal peer-to-peer activity using offshore platforms is plausible given periodic foreign-currency shortages affecting kina convertibility. Authoritative country-specific data isolating Papua New Guinea crypto volumes is not publicly available.

Industry Focus

There is no licensed domestic crypto industry. Activity that exists is informal and connects retail users to international exchanges. The most concrete digital-finance developments in the country are public-sector: the digital identity infrastructure rollout through SevisPass and the central bank’s digital kina exploration. The Bougainville VASP license market is at an early stage and operates under legal uncertainty given the territory’s transitional constitutional status relative to the national PNG legal framework. Reports of crypto mining projects linked to the country’s liquefied natural gas resources remain unverified, and such claims should be treated with caution in the absence of corroborating regulatory or corporate filings.

Regulatory Evolution

Papua New Guinea is a member of the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG). The third-round Mutual Evaluation Report, adopted by APG in September 2024, identified significant effectiveness gaps despite some progress on technical compliance: the country was rated Compliant on 4 of the FATF 40 Recommendations and recorded no Highly Effective or Substantially Effective immediate outcomes. As a direct result, FATF added Papua New Guinea to its Jurisdictions under Increased Monitoring list at the February 2026 plenary. The action plan requires improved ML-risk understanding, endorsement of the National AML/CFT/CPF Strategic Plan, proactive international cooperation, and risk-based supervision of banks, money or value transfer service providers, and higher-risk designated non-financial businesses and professions. This is the second grey-listing for Papua New Guinea; the country was first listed in 2014 and removed in 2016 after legal reforms. Within the Pacific, Papua New Guinea sits toward the restrictive end of the regional spectrum on private virtual asset activity, while simultaneously advancing meaningful sovereign digital-finance projects through the digital kina and SevisPass identity programme.