Vietnam Confirms Its First Licensed Crypto Asset Service Providers Should Launch in 2026
Deputy Finance Minister Nguyen Duc Chi told Austria's Financial Market Authority in Vienna on September 15 that Vietnam's first licensed crypto asset service providers are expected to receive licenses and begin operations in 2026, according to crypto.news. The framework runs under a five-year pilot established by Resolution No. 05/2025/NQ-CP, with formal licensing applications opening in January 2026 and enforcement penalties for unlicensed activity — up to VND 200 million for organizations — taking effect September 1.
Seven companies have applied; five, including affiliates of Techcombank, VPBank and LPBank alongside VIX Securities and Sun Group, have cleared an initial screening round, per Bitcoin World. None had received a final license as of August 30. Applicants must be Vietnamese enterprises with at least 10 trillion dong (roughly $383 million) in paid charter capital, with a minimum 65% held by institutional shareholders — a bar closer to stock-exchange licensing than typical crypto-exchange requirements. Vietnam has been on the FATF grey list since June 2026, and officials are reportedly using the extended screening period to build regulatory credibility before issuing any licenses.
Bain, DBS and Vriens & Partners Warn AI Will Widen — Not Narrow — Southeast Asia's Growth Gap
A joint outlook from Bain & Company, DBS Bank and Vriens & Partners published September 16 projects the six largest Southeast Asian economies — Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam — to grow an average 4.8% annually between 2026 and 2035, but warns that "AI has the potential to widen economic performance gaps" between them rather than lift the region uniformly. Singapore and Vietnam are named as current outperformers, "supported by AI-linked semiconductor demand, manufacturing exports and investment momentum," while Malaysia is described as a winner of the data-centre and hardware boom specifically. Net FDI inflows into the six economies rose 25% in 2025, with Singapore alone capturing more than 60% of the region's total and standing as the largest single source of FDI into Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.
Bain partner Ravi Vijayaraghavan said "each country faces a distinct fan of outcomes, shaped by its structural foundations and near-term policy choices," while DBS chief economist Taimur Baig added that "building credible institutions, raising productivity, and executing macro policies consistently are prerequisites." Vriens & Partners' Hans Vriens framed it more bluntly: "policy choices account for a growing share of divergence in current performance and future prospects."
Korea's Aracore Signs an MOU With Malaysia's Teiza to Explore a Stablecoin Settlement Corridor
Aracore, the U.S. subsidiary of Korean blockchain and AI company BPMG, signed a memorandum of understanding on September 21 with Malaysian blockchain infrastructure firm Teiza to jointly explore an institutional stablecoin payment and settlement model connecting South Korea and Malaysia, according to UseTheBitcoin and Digital Today. The plan is to link Aracore's Institutional Settlement Network — which coordinates settlement across banks and liquidity providers without holding customer assets directly — with Teiza's institutional network across Malaysia and wider Southeast Asia, in order to identify actual transaction demand before any proof-of-concept or pilot. No banks have been named as participants yet.
Teiza launched the Malaysia Digital Consortium in November 2025 with 19 founding members and says it has since grown to more than 30. Aracore has run a near-identical playbook before: a three-way MOU signed in July with South Korea's K Bank and Hong Kong's HashKey Group targeted a Korea-Hong Kong stablecoin remittance corridor, also still in the exploratory stage. The Malaysia MOU adds to Bank Negara Malaysia's Digital Asset Innovation Hub, which has onboarded three ringgit-stablecoin and tokenised-deposit initiatives for 2026 led by Standard Chartered, Maybank and CIMB respectively.
Eyes on the Day Ahead
Luno holds its second Institutional Digital Asset Conference (LIDAC) in Kuala Lumpur on September 24, with Securities Commission Malaysia, Standard Chartered and Maybank confirmed to detail Malaysia's stablecoin pilots and first tokenised sukuk issuance — worth watching for any concrete timeline on BNM's promised end-2026 regulatory clarity on ringgit stablecoins.
Layer 7 Ventures is a research-driven firm focused on AI and cryptocurrency in Southeast Asia. Views expressed are those of the firm and do not constitute investment advice.
