Central Bank of the Republic of Azerbaijan extends two special regulatory regime crypto trials by six months and halts two projects

The Central Bank of the Republic of Azerbaijan has completed the first-phase testing under its special regulatory regime and decided to extend two admitted products for a further six months, while stopping two projects that did not achieve the expected test results. The extended trials cover Pasha Pay LLC’s “m10” application integration with the Binance platform, enabling users to deposit to and withdraw from Binance wallets, and Unicapital Investment Company OJSC’s “Cryptobroker” platform for buying, selling and storing virtual assets. The Central Bank halted Mobile Payment Solutions LLC’s PortCoin project, under which the PortCoin cryptocurrency was issued and offered to Portmanat users for investment purposes, and Svort LLC’s crypto trading platform offering fiat-to-token trading, token-to-token exchange, wallet opening and secure storage of customers’ virtual assets. The Central Bank reiterated that the special regulatory regime is intended to test innovative financial products in a limited setting under central bank oversight and to develop the legal and regulatory basis for broader roll-out of products that demonstrate successful outcomes.