Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority has announced the formation of a formal consultative group to develop the country’s virtual assets regulatory framework, marking a significant step toward structuring Pakistan’s rapidly growing digital assets market through a process that places industry voices at the centre of policymaking. The development was shared by Chairman Bilal Bin Saqib during an industry briefing that brought together founders, chief executives, technologists, and financial innovators from across Pakistan’s digital assets sector. The consultative group will work directly with the regulator to shape policy, ensuring that the framework is built with industry input rather than in isolation, with officials describing the move as an effort to create a two-way engagement model between regulators and market participants.
Highlighting the broader opportunity, the chairman said Pakistan receives $38.3 billion in remittances annually and has more than 100 million adults outside the formal financial system, positioning virtual assets as a potential infrastructure layer for financial inclusion at a national scale. These figures underscore why the stakes of getting the regulatory framework right are particularly high for Pakistan. A well-designed virtual assets framework has the potential to channel a significant portion of the country’s remittance flows through regulated digital rails, reducing costs for recipients and improving transparency for regulators, while simultaneously bringing tens of millions of currently unbanked citizens into formal digital financial services for the first time.
The formation of the consultative group follows a series of landmark developments in Pakistan’s virtual assets policy over the past year. The State Bank of Pakistan lifted its blanket ban on crypto services, allowing banks and financial institutions to serve licensed crypto firms under a new regulatory framework, a move that followed the enactment of the 2026 Virtual Assets Act, which established Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority to license, regulate, and supervise the sector. Under the new framework, banks can provide services to virtual asset service providers licensed under the new crypto legislation, subject to strict compliance with anti-money laundering, know-your-customer, and counter-terrorism financing regulations. Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority has also granted no-objection certificates to major global crypto exchanges including Binance and HTX, marking a significant step in regulating the virtual asset sector, while the Economic Coordination Committee approved a Rs. 800 million Technical Supplementary Grant for the authority to strengthen institutional capacity and develop the regulatory framework for virtual assets. The consultative group now being formed will sit atop this legislative and institutional foundation, translating the broad mandates of the Virtual Assets Act into detailed, workable rules that reflect the operational realities of the industry it seeks to govern.
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