Coins.ph faces central bank action in Philippines crypto market

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Coins.ph faces central bank action

Highlights

Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas imposed restrictions on Coins.ph's main wallet firm DCPay Philippines amid alleged compliance breaches linked to offshore gambling clients, potentially endangering Coins.ph's operating license.
Multiple senior compliance staff recently departed Coins.ph after regulators acted, with restrictions on deposits currently not time-bound and no official reasons disclosed.
Coins.ph, controlling 75–80% of peso-to-stablecoin liquidity and serving over 18 million customers with $50 million daily spot trading volume, faces heightened regulatory risk in the Philippines' critical remittance market.

Regulatory scrutiny and alleged compliance breaches

As first reported by CoinDesk, Coins.ph is facing punitive action from financial regulators at Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, citing people with knowledge of the matter. The alleged infractions involve services provided to offshore gambling firms and are described by the people as serious enough to potentially put the company's operating license at risk.

At the start of this month, the central bank reportedly imposed restrictions on deposits to the exchange made through Coins.ph's main wallet firm, DCPay Philippines. One person said the restriction is not time-bound, unlike temporary suspensions usually applied for issues such as throughput or latency non-compliance, and no reason was given.

The reported regulatory move follows the departure of several senior compliance staff, including chief compliance officer Lexi Herrera, head of anti-money laundering transaction monitoring Chris Beaño and money laundering reporting officer Irish Calagui. Neither Coins.ph nor the Philippine central bank responded to requests for comment by publication time.

Market significance for remittances and crypto liquidity

Coins.ph has more than 18 million customers and records about $50 million in 24-hour spot trading volume, according to the report. It also controls roughly 75% to 80% of peso-to-stablecoin liquidity in the Philippines, an important channel in one of the world's largest remittance markets.

A little over a year ago, the central bank tightened rules on the use of e-wallet applications for gambling purposes and ordered supervised institutions to cut in-app access to gambling sites. According to the people, several gambling entities then migrated to Coins.ph, gaining access to crypto and stablecoins that could be used to pay offshore partners.

The company is one of the Philippines' earliest crypto wallets and exchanges and later expanded into broader financial services. Gojek acquired Coins.ph for $95 million in January 2019, and the business was later sold to Wei Zhou, formerly Binance's chief financial officer.

Our earlier article covered U.S. regulators’ $1.2 billion penalty against Bank of America over major failures in its anti-money laundering and sanctions controls. We noted that authorities said the bank failed to properly report more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions and imposed orders requiring remediation and stronger monitoring and reporting.

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