The UK government has laid the final draft of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Cryptoassets) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2026 before Parliament, carving out a significant exemption for UK qualifying stablecoin payments while keeping broader crypto lending and trading activities inside the regulatory perimeter.
The instrument, laid on Sept. 15, would remove qualifying transfers from rules on dealing as principal, dealing as agent and arranging deals. However, it has not yet been made and is not in force.
A UK qualifying stablecoin must be issued through the regulated article 9M activity by a firm with the relevant FCA permission. Overseas-issued tokens or coins that merely track sterling would not automatically qualify.
Under the draft, sending a UK qualifying stablecoin to another person could fall outside the dealer perimeter, as could exchanging it for money or another UK qualifying stablecoin. The boundary changes when a transaction resembles financing or crypto trading: if the recipient must return the stablecoin later, the basic exclusion does not apply, leaving ordinary lending or borrowing potentially regulated. Swapping the stablecoin for another qualifying cryptoasset, such as Bitcoin, also remains outside the payment carve-out.
The final text adds a wholesale-style exception for certain title-transfer collateral and repo arrangements involving qualifying stablecoins, where the original holder is neither a consumer nor a person specified by the FCA.
A new safeguarding provision would exclude temporary holding of a UK qualifying stablecoin when connected with executing a payment. Longer-term custody, such as maintaining a customer wallet, receives no equivalent payment exception and can remain within the safeguarding activity.
Financial-promotion rules broadly align with the transfer, exchange, collateral and repo exclusions, though arrangements requiring the stablecoin to be returned do not receive the basic promotion exemption.
The dealing, arranging and financial-promotion amendments are drafted to begin on Oct. 25, 2027, when the FCA says the new regime for crypto firms starts. Parliament must approve the draft first, and HM Treasury’s separate payments reform still has to define longer-term rules for stablecoins used in payments.
