AUSTRAC (Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre)

Institution

AUSTRAC is Australia's financial-intelligence and AML/CTF (anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism-financing) regulator, and on tokenisation it is the agency that runs Digital Currency Exchange (DCE) registration, the gate most crypto exchanges and remitters operating in or from Australia have to clear. For a tokenisation operator, AUSTRAC is the compliance counterparty for transaction-monitoring and reporting obligations, distinct from the licensing role ASIC plays for the underlying product.

What it is

The DCE registration regime predates Australia's Digital Assets Framework Bill (passed 1 April 2026) and continues to operate alongside it: a digital asset platform licensed under the new AFSL-based regime still needs DCE registration if it functions as an exchange. AUSTRAC's posture is incremental rather than bespoke, stretching existing AML/CTF rules to fit tokenised products rather than legislating a separate tokenisation-specific compliance regime.

Relevance to tokenisation

AUSTRAC sits alongside ASIC (conduct and licensing), RBA (wholesale settlement experimentation), and APRA (prudential treatment) as one of four agencies splitting Australia's digital-asset oversight; see Australia's digital-asset regulatory architecture for the full four-way split.