PVARA transition ends: what the September 5 NOC deadline means for users

Photo: Steve Jurvetson / Wikimedia Commons ↗, CC BY 2.0 ↗

ISLAMABAD, September 11, 2026 — The six-month transition period for Pakistan’s existing crypto platforms closed on September 5, 2026. A firm that filed a complete no-objection certificate (NOC) application by that date may keep serving its existing users under PVARA’s interim directives, and a firm that did not had to stop. Three weeks later, PVARA has published neither a list of applicants nor any enforcement notice.

What the September 5 deadline required

Section 70 of the Virtual Assets Act, 2026 gave anyone providing virtual asset services immediately before the Act commenced on March 5, 2026 six months to apply or cease. A person who submitted a complete application “may continue to provide existing Virtual Asset Services”, subject to any interim directives the Authority issues and the Act’s core obligations.

PVARA set the filing date and asked for NOC applications rather than licence applications. Providers had to file “by Sept 5, 2026 or cease operations”, PVARA said in a press release quoted by Dawn on August 23, 2026. PVARA calls firms that were operating on or before March 5, 2026 transitional persons and says operating after the deadline without an application is an offence, Cointelegraph reported on August 23, 2026. The final regulations were notified on August 21, 2026 and the licensing portal opened the next day, according to The Paypers of August 26, 2026, which also notes that PVARA can restrict an applicant’s onboarding, products, transaction volumes or custody arrangements while its file is reviewed.

What changed

• Before: a platform operating on or before March 5, 2026 could continue during the six-month transition under section 70.
• Now: only a platform that filed a complete NOC application by the deadline may continue its existing services, under PVARA’s interim directives; the rest were required to stop.
• Effective: September 5, 2026.

Enforcement after the deadline

Days before the deadline, PVARA’s chairman told a parliamentary committee that the two NOC holders had until September 5 to complete registration, after which “restrictions and enforcement action would begin against the unregistered operators”, Geo News reported on September 1, 2026. No PVARA statement, deadline extension or named enforcement action dated between September 6 and September 27, 2026 could be found for this report.

About 70 applications, none named

PVARA chairman Bilal Bin Saqib said the authority had received 70 applications, in an interview published by TechJuice on September 10, 2026; 24NewsHD reported the same figure that day. PVARA has not named any applicant.

The only NOCs PVARA itself has announced went to Binance and HTX on December 12, 2025, on its news page. An NOC is not an operating licence: PVARA’s December 2025 statement, as reported by The Standard, said it lets a firm register on the FMU goAML system, incorporate a local subsidiary and submit its full licence application.

Where to check a platform’s status

Section 21(4) of the Act requires PVARA to publish an up-to-date register of licensees on its website, with each one’s name, licence number, permitted services and current regulatory status. No such register was found on pvara.gov.pk as of September 27, 2026, and no full licence has been reported, so there are no licensees to list. The official pages a reader can check today are PVARA’s news and licensing pages.

Banks are the second check. Under the State Bank circular letter on bank accounts for PVARA NOC holders and licensed VASPs, a bank must independently verify a licence with PVARA before opening a virtual asset service provider’s account; an NOC holder gets only a limited-purpose account to complete licensing, and transactional services follow the grant of a licence. The number BPRD Circular Letter No. 10 of 2026 and the date April 14, 2026 come from Reuters and other reports of April 15, 2026; the SBP page as indexed shows no date.

What this means for you If you hold balances on a platform, you cannot confirm from any official source whether it filed by September 5, because PVARA has named no applicant and the section 21(4) register is not live. We record each confirmed NOC and licence, with its date and official source, on our PVARA licence tracker.

Warning A claim that a platform has “applied to PVARA” or is “PVARA approved” cannot be checked against any official register today. PVARA has announced NOCs only for Binance and HTX, and no platform has been reported to hold a full licence.

Risk Crypto-assets are highly volatile and you can lose all the money you put in. Use only platforms with PVARA approval. This is not a recommendation to buy.