India’s Financial Intelligence Unit has issued compliance notices to 15 additional crypto platforms for serving Indian users without registering under the country’s anti-money laundering law, CoinDesk reported Wednesday. The action continues an enforcement campaign that began in December 2023 and has now touched dozens of offshore exchanges, from Binance and Kraken to smaller offshore venues. The FIU did not publish the full list in its initial statement, but the notice follows the same template as previous rounds: platforms catering to Indian users must register with the agency as reporting entities under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, whether or not they have a physical presence in India. Registration obligations attach to the activity itself, not the location of the company, which is why platforms incorporated in Singapore, Dubai or the Seychelles keep landing on Indian enforcement lists.
How the regime works
India brought virtual digital asset service providers under the PMLA in March 2023. The obligation is activity-based: any platform that exchanges crypto for rupees, transfers assets, or provides safekeeping for Indian users must register with the FIU, keep KYC records, monitor transactions and file suspicious activity reports. Reporting entities must also maintain documents verifying the identity of clients and beneficial owners, and preserve business correspondence. Registration is not optional for offshore firms, a point the finance ministry has repeated in every enforcement round. Platforms that ignore the notices face the standard playbook. The FIU asks the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to block their websites and apps in India, and penalizes them under Section 13 of the PMLA. Bybit paid a 9.27 crore rupee fine, about $1.06 million, before resuming Indian services. Binance and KuCoin registered and paid penalties in 2024 after being blocked. OKX chose to leave the country entirely rather than register. Around 50 virtual asset service providers have registered with the FIU to date, so a legal market exists and operates for compliant firms alongside the enforcement.
| FIU enforcement round | Platforms named | Notable targets |
|---|---|---|
| December 2023 | 9 | Binance, KuCoin, Kraken, Bitfinex, Gate.io |
| October 2025 | 25 | Huione, Paxful, CEX.IO, BingX, CoinEx, BitMEX |
| September 2026 | 15 | Full list not yet published |
Why India keeps pulling this lever
India has no comprehensive crypto law, and the Reserve Bank of India still argues internally for prohibition, citing tax evasion risk in a Reuters report from January. What exists instead is enforcement plus taxation. The country levies a 30% tax on crypto profits and a 1% tax deducted at source on every trade, a combination that pushed much of Indian trading volume offshore, which in turn put those offshore platforms in the FIU’s sights. The result is a cycle. Heavy taxation pushes users toward unregistered offshore venues, the FIU notices the outflow and issues blocks, some platforms register and pay fines, and part of the market repatriates legally. Each new round of notices is less about discovering a new problem and more about maintaining pressure as the offshore market reshuffles and new venues pop up to replace blocked ones. The October 2025 round, which named 25 platforms including Huione, a hub later linked to organized cybercrime networks in Southeast Asia, showed the FIU also using its list to cut off venues tied to broader criminal ecosystems, not just exchanges avoiding taxes. Moneycontrol reported at the time that the 25 named platforms collectively handled billions in user assets, with 14 of them generating more than $22 billion in daily trading volume.
What the 15 new notices mean
For the named platforms, the realistic options mirror the past two rounds: register with the FIU, pay any penalty, accept KYC and reporting obligations, and keep operating, or lose Indian traffic to website and app-store blocks. Some will likely exit instead, following OKX. For registered Indian platforms such as CoinDCX, WazirX and CoinSwitch, each enforcement round is competitive relief, since noncompliant offshore rivals lose their frictionless access to the world’s largest crypto-using population by headcount. For users, the practical effect is smaller. Blocked sites remain reachable through VPNs, and India’s peer-to-peer crypto volume has historically migrated rather than disappeared. The broader question, whether India will legislate a real market framework instead of governing through the tax code and enforcement actions, remains unanswered. A document prepared for international coordination last year, reported by Reuters, showed the RBI arguing that effective regulation would be difficult, effectively keeping India in the enforcement-only posture that produced this week’s notices. Until that changes, expect the notice lists to keep growing.
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