SEA Daily Brief: Indonesia's OJK shuts 228 illegal crypto platforms as a new OECD report maps Asia's regulatory gap, Malaysia scraps the RM1 interbank ATM fee nationwide, and Thailand's Amity Robotics raises US$7 million for physical-AI concierge robots

Indonesia's OJK shuts 228 illegal crypto platforms as a new OECD report maps Asia's regulatory gap

Indonesia's Financial Services Authority (OJK), through its illegal-finance task force Satgas PASTI, shut down 228 unlicensed digital-asset traders between January and May 2026 — an average of more than one closure every working day — alongside 27 illegal private pawnshops, according to CNBC Indonesia. The task force reiterated that crypto trading may be conducted only by entities licensed by OJK and that traded tokens must appear on the official Crypto Asset List, warning the public against operators promising guaranteed returns through social-media and messaging channels.

The enforcement push coincides with the OECD's Asia Capital Markets Report 2026, which Blockhead reported found blockchain-based crypto-asset transactions across Asia rose 69% year on year between June 2024 and June 2025. India led regional inflows at roughly US$340 billion (about 9% of GDP), while Indonesia ranked fourth in absolute volume; the OECD also estimated that some US$69 billion flowed into scam- and fraud-linked crypto assets globally between 2020 and 2025. Indonesia's supervision has meanwhile hardened: Law No. 4 of 2026, the revised Financial Sector Development and Strengthening Law, took effect on July 1 and gives OJK bank-style authority over crypto — spanning capital adequacy, custody segregation, governance and conduct standards.

Malaysia scraps the RM1 interbank ATM withdrawal fee nationwide from July 1

From July 1, Malaysian debit cardholders no longer pay the RM1 interbank fee for cash withdrawals at any bank's automated teller machine (ATM) or Smart Recycler Machine (SRM), with no cap on the number of free withdrawals across more than 14,000 machines nationwide. The waiver was announced on June 15 jointly by the Association of Banks in Malaysia (ABM), the Association of Islamic Banking and Financial Institutions Malaysia (AIBIM) and the Association of Development Finance Institutions of Malaysia (ADFIM), in collaboration with Payments Network Malaysia (PayNet), according to Fintech News Malaysia and RinggitPlus.

The fee, originally levied through the MEPS interbank network, was temporarily suspended during Malaysia's 2020 pandemic lockdown and reinstated in February 2022; the banking associations stressed that this removal is permanent rather than an emergency measure. The exemption applies only to machines operated by participating banks — third-party, non-bank ATM operators may still charge the RM1 fee — and the associations framed it as making basic banking more affordable for customers in rural areas, smaller towns and East Malaysia, and for holders of accounts at smaller banks and development finance institutions with limited ATM footprints.

Thailand's Amity Robotics raises US$7 million to expand physical-AI concierge robots across Asia

Amity Robotics, a Thailand-based physical-AI and robotics company, has raised US$7 million in a seed round combining equity and debt, according to TechNode Global. The equity portion was led by East Ventures with participation from 500 Global, while AlteriQ Global provided the debt financing. Its core product, ARC Base, is a static AI-concierge kiosk now deployed across more than 30 properties spanning Singapore, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia — with a first European deployment slated for July — and clients including mall operators Pavilion KL, Siam Piwat, The Mall Group and Pacific Place Jakarta, and hotel groups IHG, Accor and Shangri-La. A mobile robot, ARC Move, is set to launch next.

Amity Robotics operates as an independent business but shares common ownership, through Amity Corporation, with the AI software group Amity, which recently closed a US$100 million Series D and last week made Singapore its global AI hub ahead of a planned 2027 listing. The robotics arm's raise extends that group's push from software into embodied AI, targeting property, hospitality and retail operators looking to automate front-of-house customer service.

Eyes on the Day Ahead

With Indonesia's Law No. 4 of 2026 now in force as of July 1, watch for OJK to begin publishing the implementing regulations that will define capital, custody and conduct requirements for licensed crypto exchanges — the detail that determines how many operators survive the transition. In the next few days, also track Vietnam's crypto-asset market sandbox, which is slated to begin operating from July 1, and the Finance 2045 summit co-located with the World AI Show in Jakarta on July 7–8, where Indonesia's roughly US$10.9 billion AI-infrastructure pipeline is expected to feature.