FIU-IND has served non-compliance notices on 15 offshore

Key takeaways

• FIU-IND has served non-compliance notices on 15 offshore VDA service providers under Section 13 of the PMLA, alongside takedown notices under Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act.
• The list is unusual: alongside derivatives venues sit instant-swap and no-account conversion tools – ChangeNOW, SimpleSwap, FixedFloat, Guardarian.
• India’s compliance test is activity-based. No office, no employees, no servers in India – still a reporting entity.
• Expect app-store delistings and DNS-level blocks as the enforcement follow-through, as happened in 2024.

List Of Exchanges Are: 

The previous sweeps read like a who’s-who of global exchanges. This one reads like a laundering-flow diagram.

Weex, Bitunix, Blofin, Toobit, XT.com, WOO X, Pionex and DigiFinex are recognisable trading venues, many of them high-leverage perpetuals platforms popular with Indian retail traders who found domestic options too slow or too taxed. But ChangeNOW, SimpleSwap, FixedFloat and Guardarian are not exchanges in the usual sense. They are conversion rails – swap one asset for another, often without an account, sometimes without meaningful KYC, and move on. Blockchain forensics firms have repeatedly traced funds from thefts and scam operations through exactly this category of service.

Reading the list that way, FIU-IND is no longer just policing where Indians trade. It is policing where stolen and defrauded rupees exit.

How we got here

• March 2023 – VDA service providers are pulled into the PMLA’s AML/CFT perimeter. Registration becomes mandatory for exchange, transfer and custody activity.
• December 2023 – Show-cause notices go to nine offshore exchanges, including Binance and KuCoin.
• January 2024 – Apple and Google pull the non-compliant apps in India; URLs get blocked.
• 2024–25 – Binance and KuCoin pay penalties and register. Compliance, it turns out, is cheaper than exclusion.
• September–October 2025 – A second wave hits 25 offshore platforms.
• September 2026 – This round of 15, with takedown notices issued in parallel rather than months later.

The expert read

Two things stand out. First, the takedown notice arriving at the same time as the Section 13 notice is a procedural tightening – the 2024 gap gave platforms months to warn users and migrate them. Second, the registered-entity count keeps climbing, which is the actual policy objective. India is not trying to end offshore access; it is converting offshore operators into reporting entities that file suspicious transaction reports.

What comes next

Blocking is porous. VPN usage will absorb some of this, and peer-to-peer and self-custodial routes absorb the rest. The real consequence is liquidity migration toward registered platforms and a thinner, riskier grey market for everyone who stays offshore.

Conclusion

India has settled into a pattern: no ban, no embrace, just relentless perimeter enforcement. For platforms, the calculation is now simple – register, or get delisted and watch a competitor take the users. For traders, the finance ministry’s warning stands unchanged. Unregulated means no recourse.