Australia’s corporate regulator, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, said the Federal Court ordered BPS Financial Pty Ltd to pay A$14 million in pecuniary penalties connected to the promotion and operation of its Qoin Wallet crypto product. The penalties were split as A$2 million for unlicensed conduct and A$12 million for misleading and deceptive conduct, according to ASIC’s announcement published on January 27, 2026.
The court’s penalty judgment, Australian Securities and Investments Commission v BPS Financial Pty Ltd (Penalty) [2026] FCA 18, sets out that BPS carried on a financial services business without an Australian Financial Services Licence and made false or misleading representations about the Qoin Wallet’s features and status.
The case matters because it frames a crypto “wallet” product as crossing into regulated territory.
ASIC described the Qoin Wallet as a non-cash payment facility linked to a crypto token called Qoin. In the earlier liability decision, the Federal Court found BPS engaged in unlicensed conduct over almost three years by issuing the product and providing financial product advice without holding an AFSL, alongside misleading conduct.
The penalty reasons note that during the relevant period BPS issued more than 96,000 Qoin Wallets and derived over $42 million in revenue from the sale of Qoin tokens, while publishing representations about:
Those findings are summarised in ASIC’s release and detailed in the penalty judgment.
The outcome was not only a dollar figure.
ASIC said the court also ordered that BPS:
These “public notice” style orders are often the part that changes behaviour across an industry because they force a product’s own distribution channels to display the regulator’s message.
This is the kind of enforcement that can be under-covered until it starts shaping how crypto wallet operators describe what they do.
The key takeaway is that “wallet” branding does not automatically keep a product outside financial services law. If a wallet is structured and marketed in a way the court treats as issuing a regulated payment facility, or if it includes conduct that counts as financial product advice, the licensing and marketing standards can apply.
It also highlights a common enforcement angle that repeats across jurisdictions: marketing claims that imply official approval, easy convertibility, or broad merchant acceptance are treated as high-risk if they are not true, not current, or not evidenced.
In the near term, market attention tends to focus on whether outcomes like this trigger copycat scrutiny of similar “wallet plus token” models, especially those relying on:
On the legal side, the cleanest way to track precedent is to read the sequence: ASIC’s liability win in [2024] FCA 457, the Full Federal Court appeal judgment in [2025] FCAFC 74, and the penalty reasons in [2026] FCA 18, all linked through ASIC’s Qoin coverage and the Federal Court judgments portal.
The Federal Court’s A$14 million penalty against BPS Financial over Qoin Wallet promotions is a clear signal that crypto wallet marketing and product structure can fall inside Australia’s financial services perimeter. The deterrence impact is amplified by the 10-year restraint and court-ordered adverse publicity notices, not just the fine amount.
The post ASIC Wins A$14M Penalty Over Qoin Wallet Promotions appeared first on Crypto Adventure.
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