Philippines central bank says Binance operates without license

Binance’s latest attempt to crack the Philippine market just hit a wall. The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the country’s central bank, confirmed on June 11 that neither Binance nor its local partner, BlockShoals Technologies Inc., holds a Certificate of Authority to operate as a Virtual Asset Service Provider.

The timing is pointed. Binance announced its partnership with BlockShoals barely two weeks earlier, on May 25, framing the deal as a legitimate path back into a market that blocked the exchange’s website in March 2024. The BSP’s response was essentially: not so fast.

Two regulators, two licenses, one problem

Here’s the thing about operating a crypto exchange in the Philippines. You need approval from two separate bodies. The Securities and Exchange Commission handles oversight of crypto asset intermediaries through its Strategic Sandbox, known as StratBox. The BSP, meanwhile, controls the VASP license, which is the authorization needed to actually offer virtual asset services to Filipino users.

BlockShoals had been making progress on the SEC side. The company received In-Principle Approval from the SEC in November 2025 and secured full Notice of Approval on April 14, 2026, as a Crypto Asset Intermediary under the sandbox framework.

But sandbox approval from the SEC is not the same thing as a VASP license from the BSP. The BSP’s statement made clear that sandbox participation does not substitute for central bank authorization.

Binance’s plan was to begin testing operations through the StratBox framework in the second half of 2026, with a minimum operational period of two years. That timeline now looks considerably less certain without BSP clearance.

A pattern of regulatory friction

This is not Binance’s first run-in with Philippine regulators. The SEC issued a warning to Binance back in November 2023 about operating without the necessary licenses. That warning escalated into concrete action when authorities blocked access to Binance’s website in March 2024, citing the exchange’s failure to register and obtain proper authorization.

The BlockShoals partnership was supposed to be the workaround. By partnering with a locally incorporated entity that had already secured SEC sandbox approval, Binance appeared to be threading the regulatory needle.

The BSP’s insistence on VASP licensing as a hard requirement, separate from SEC sandbox approvals, sends a signal to every crypto platform eyeing the Philippine market. Sandbox participation is a testing phase, not a backdoor to full operations.

For Binance, the path forward likely involves direct engagement with the BSP to pursue VASP licensing — noting that the BSP has maintained a moratorium on new VASP applications for three years.

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