Australia eases licensing rules for stablecoin intermediaries

Australia’s Securities and Investment Commission on Thursday announced a class exemption that lets licensed intermediaries distribute stablecoins without requiring separate regulatory approvals, a first for the country’s crypto rules.

Stablecoin intermediaries are entities like crypto exchanges, brokers, or platforms that facilitate the distribution, trading, or transfer of stablecoins to users without creating the stablecoins themselves.

Firms overseen by Australian Financial Services will be able to offer fiat-pegged digital assets without holding a separate AFS, market, or clearing licence, according to Thursday’s notice. The relief will take effect once the instrument is registered on the Federal Register of Legislation.

By lowering interim licensing frictions for intermediaries of AFS-issued stablecoins, Australia is sketching the contours of its crypto regulatory framework, while preserving consumer protections.
For stablecoin issuers, it offers a clearer route to distribution ahead of formal payments and platform legislation.

The measure arrives via ASIC’s Stablecoin Distribution Exemption Instrument, which temporarily removes licensing obligations for secondary distributors of a named stablecoin, subject to consumer safeguards. Distributors must, for retail clients, make the issuer’s Product Disclosure Statement available, and the relief sunsets on June 1, 2028.

Initially, the instrument lists Catena Digital Pty Ltd and its AUDMA stablecoin as the initial “Named Stablecoin” and issuer. ASIC indicated that it may extend the rule to additional issuers as more stablecoins secure AFS licences.

The exemption is meant as a bridge to forthcoming national legislation. The government’s March 2025 policy outline proposes a dual-track regime covering digital asset platforms (DAPs) and payment stablecoins. It also explicitly flags that businesses will not need a financial markets licence just to provide certain stablecoins and wrapped tokens under the new settings.

More broadly, stablecoin regulation is taking root in several jurisdictions. The U.S., under Donald Trump, recently passed its first federal framework for stablecoin oversight via the GENIUS Act. Locations like Hong Kong and China are also working on stablecoin rules, albeit with different approaches.