Indian Financial Intelligence Agency Names 15 Offshore Crypto Platforms
The Indian Financial Intelligence Agency has issued non-compliance notices to 15 virtual digital asset service providers under Article 13 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, accusing them of providing services to Indian clients without registration.
The named entities include Weex International Exchange, BLF Global, RezorEx, Bitunix, DigiFinex, Hopeful Technology, Fibtc/XT TECHNICAL, LAtrade, Wootech, Marketa Trading, CHN Group, SimpleSwap, FFGX Group, UAB Clear White Technologies, and FinSeven CZ, corresponding to platforms Weex, Blofin, Rezorex, Bitunix, DigiFinex, Toobit, XT.com, Latoken, WOO X, Pionex, ChangeNow, SimpleSwap, Fixedfloat, WhiteBIT, and Guardarian.
At the same time, based on relevant provisions of the Information Technology Act, the agency has demanded the removal of the public-facing applications and websites of the aforementioned entities, citing their failure to fulfill anti-money laundering obligations while providing services in India. The obligations are determined by business activities and do not depend on whether a physical office is established in India.
The covered activities include exchanges between virtual digital assets and fiat currency, asset transfers, custody or management, and providing tools to control related assets. After registration, records must be kept, user identities verified, and suspicious activities reported. Since March 2023, such service providers have been included in the same anti-money laundering framework as banks in India.
This announcement did not simultaneously declare fines against the 15 companies. The agency also warned the public that crypto products and NFTs remain unregulated in India, posing extremely high risks, and related losses may not receive regulatory relief.
From a market mechanism perspective, this is a regulatory-driven channel cleanup: unregistered offshore platforms face entry barriers, while entities that have registered with the intelligence agency and completed suspicious transaction reports can capture compliant traffic; exchange, instant exchange, and gift card bypass channels are under pressure, while licensed or registered platforms benefit relatively from local payment interfaces. Funds are shifting from cross-border matching without reporting obligations to a registration system that can be named, removed, and penalized.
Previous similar enforcement actions have covered large offshore exchanges, with some platforms subsequently completing registration and paying fines; this list primarily includes small and medium-sized exchanges and exchange services, indicating that enforcement is extending from major platforms to long-tail entry points.
Source: Public Information
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India has included virtual digital asset service providers under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, following a "register first, report later, then cut off entry" approach: in March 2023, the activity standards were aligned with bank-level obligations, and by the end of 2023, notices were issued to Binance, KuCoin, Kraken, etc., promoting website blocking. Binance subsequently registered and paid approximately 1.882 billion rupees in fines, while Bybit was fined about 927 million rupees. The 15 named entities are smaller, indicating that the same set of tools is descending from major exchanges to exchange desks and long-tail matching platforms.
Resource mobilization is concentrated in three areas: mandatory registration as reporting entities, requirements to maintain transaction and identity records, and using the Information Technology Act to remove applications and websites. The motivation is not to license crypto products but to make "serving Indian users" itself a jurisdictional act. Strategically, after the physical presence is hollowed out, the traffic entry becomes the only executable leverage; removal notices cut off customer acquisition faster than waiting for cross-border judicial assistance.
Similar cases include a set of non-compliance notices and removal directives for about 25 offshore platforms in 2025, as well as earlier blocking of nine large exchanges. The industry phase has shifted from user expansion to channel control: registered entities are still few, unregistered platforms continue to rely on VPNs and alternative domains to maintain access, while regulators compress their public customer acquisition through repeated naming.
This represents capital concentration driven by regulatory changes: reporting obligations push liquidity from anonymous exchange layers towards registered entities. The mechanism is that the principle of the place of activity replaces the principle of the place of registration; once the entry can be closed, the customer acquisition costs for unregistered platforms increase, while registered platforms gain a premium for scarce compliant channels.
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Long-tail platforms are named first because the major ones have already been incorporated