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Treasury to revise draft crypto cross-border rules

Published

Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana said a consultation process will start to produce a revised second draft of the regulations. The first draft drew thousands of comments, and the new approach will drop pre-approvals.

Godongwana spoke while presenting the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement. He said: "We must aim to shift away from pre-approvals. Instead, we must assess transactions for legitimacy and tax compliance."

The first draft would have required crypto asset service providers that facilitate cross-border transactions to get approval from the Financial Surveillance Department of the South African Reserve Bank.

Marius Reitz, General Manager for Africa at crypto platform Luno, said Treasury deserves applause for taking feedback into account. He said that going ahead with the draft would have made South Africa an outlier. He also said early gains made through the financial sector conduct authority would have been lost to the industry.

Key facts

Who
Enoch Godongwana (Finance Minister); Marius Reitz (General Manager for Africa at crypto management platform Luno); Stephen Grootes
What
In his Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana said a consultation process will start with the aim of publishing a revised second draft of the regulations, and that the approach will shift away from pre-approvals toward assessing transactions for legitimacy and tax compliance. The original proposal would have required crypto asset service providers facilitating…
When
22 October 2026
Where
South Africa
Status
Reported

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