Philippines VASP regulation: BSP draft would pause new payment operator applications for twelve months

The information provided in this article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Cryptocurrency investments carry a high degree of risk. Always conduct your own research.A BSP draft could suspend OPS applications for twelve months and apply stricter checks to payment relationships with VASP-adjacent firms. What applies to providers and customers. Several trade publications have reported in recent weeks on possible new restrictions for crypto-adjacent payment services in the Philippines. Those reports rest on a policy exposure draft published in 2026 by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), the Philippine central bank. The BSP draft covers two distinct subjects: a possible suspension of new applications for Operators of Payment Systems (OPS), and tighter requirements for payment relationships with companies that work with virtual assets. One point matters throughout: a draft of this kind becomes binding only once it is formally issued. Content, timing and transitional rules can still change before then. What the BSP draft actually proposes The draft describes several measures that still have to be read in the conditional, since none has been fin...