Thailand is tightening oversight of cryptocurrency transfers, bringing self-custodial wallets further into the country's financial compliance regime.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said its new 'Travel Rule for Digital Assets' will take effect on Feb. 27, 2027. Under the rules, licensed digital-asset operators must collect and transmit information about the sender and recipient of crypto transfers and conduct due diligence on counterparties.

A key change concerns the treatment of self-custodial wallets — wallets where users control their own private keys rather than relying on an exchange or other custodian. Thai crypto operators will be required to verify ownership or control of such wallets whenever customers send or receive digital assets. For transfers of 30,000 Thai baht or more, additional ownership or control checks apply.

Operators will also have to retain transaction information for at least five years and make it available for regulatory examination. The requirements are designed to give authorities greater visibility into crypto flows and reduce the use of regulated platforms for financial crime.

Thailand's SEC Secretary-General, Pornanong Budsaratragoon, said the rules aim to "reduce the risk of digital asset operators being used for money laundering and terrorist financing."

The move places Thailand alongside a growing number of jurisdictions implementing the global Travel Rule framework, which is intended to make crypto transfers more traceable by requiring identifying information to travel with transactions. The framework originates from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the intergovernmental body that sets anti-money-laundering standards; FATF extended its long-standing Travel Rule — first applied to wire transfers in traditional finance — to virtual assets in 2019, and jurisdictions including the United States, the European Union, Singapore, and the United Kingdom have since adopted their own implementations, with differing thresholds and self-custodial wallet treatment.

For users, the significance goes beyond another exchange compliance check: transactions between regulated platforms and privately controlled wallets will increasingly require users to prove that they control the wallet sending or receiving the funds. Proof of ownership typically takes the form of a signed message from the wallet or a small test transaction — a practice already familiar to users in jurisdictions with similar rules.

The rules follow two rounds of public consultation held earlier this year and give Thai digital-asset businesses nearly six months to build the systems needed for compliance.

Related developments: Thailand has proposed adding 'funding source providers' for crypto firms (REGULATION); the UK's crypto wallet identification rules have raised compliance and enforcement risks for users (REGULATION); and the Bank of Thailand is preparing a regulatory crackdown on transactions involving USDT (REGULATION).

Source: BitcoinKE