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Peru Curated

DeFi Intel Research Desk2026-07-14Americas

ISO 3166-1PE
RegionAmericas
CapitalLima
Population34M
GDP rank (global)#52
Profile depthCurated

Partially — holding is legal but activity is limited in Peru. Current status: Legal to hold and trade — AML registration only, no market licence. Oversight sits with SBS & UIF-Perú (AML); SMV and BCRP by remit. Full details — governing law, licensing, tax and dated enforcement history — follow below (last reviewed 2026-07-14).

Legal status

Legal to hold and trade — AML registration only, no market licence

Primary regulator

SBS & UIF-Perú (AML); SMV and BCRP by remit

Stablecoin status

No dedicated regime — treated as virtual assets

Framework: Supreme Decree 006-2023-JUS (July 2023) brought Virtual Asset Service Providers (PSAV) into the AML system; SBS Resolution N.° 02648-2024 (in force 2 August 2024) sets the detailed AML/CFT standard under UIF-Perú supervision. There is no market-licensing statute — the "Ley Marco para la Comercialización de Criptoactivos" (Bill 1042-2021-CR) remains pending in Congress.

Peru regulates crypto as an anti-money-laundering problem, not yet as a financial market. Owning, buying, selling and trading crypto-assets is lawful, but they are not legal tender: only the Peruvian sol, issued by the Banco Central de Reserva del Perú (BCRP), holds that status, and Law 28194 on payment means does not recognise crypto. There is no comprehensive market-conduct, prudential or consumer-protection regime for exchanges. Instead, the state built an AML/CFT perimeter around service providers. Supreme Decree 006-2023-JUS, published in July 2023, made PSAVs "obligated subjects" that must report to the Unidad de Inteligencia Financiera (UIF-Perú); the Superintendencia de Banca, Seguros y AFP (SBS), which houses the UIF, then issued Resolution 02648-2024 to spell out the compliance standard.

Supervisory roles are split. The SBS/UIF-Perú owns AML supervision of PSAVs. The Superintendencia del Mercado de Valores (SMV) oversees securities but has repeatedly stated it does not supervise the crypto market, and the BCRP handles monetary matters and is running its own digital-sol pilot. All three have issued public risk warnings while stressing that crypto offerings sit outside their authorisation regimes. The net effect is a registration-and-warning model rather than a licensing one.

The AML registration regime and the pending Framework Law

SBS Resolution N.° 02648-2024 is the operative rulebook. It came into force on 2 August 2024 and gave existing providers a 120-day window to adapt. Under Article 2, a PSAV is any entity that exchanges virtual assets for fiat, exchanges one virtual asset for another, transfers virtual assets, provides custody or administration, or participates in and provides financial services related to the offer or sale of a virtual asset. Covered firms must register with UIF-Perú as obligated subjects and keep that status current, stand up a money-laundering and terrorist-financing prevention system (SPLAFT) with risk-based policies, appoint a compliance officer, run customer due diligence, file suspicious-transaction reports, train staff, and notify UIF-Perú within 30 days of ceasing operations or of relevant changes. The obligation reaches PSAVs incorporated or domiciled in Peru and Peruvian branches of foreign providers.

Crucially, this is registration, not a licence. There is no authorisation gate, capital requirement, market-conduct code or consumer-protection standard attached to it; a firm that meets its AML duties may operate. The missing market framework is what the "Ley Marco para la Comercialización de Criptoactivos" (Bill 1042-2021-CR) is meant to supply. In its published response the SBS has confirmed that, if the bill becomes law, the SBS would be the body charged with authorising and registering cryptoasset-commercialisation companies; the bill also states expressly that cryptoassets are not legal tender. As of mid-2026 the bill had not been enacted — it advanced through committee but was reported returned to committee during 2025 amid continuing disagreement over the legal nature of cryptoassets and which authority should run an integrated regime. Its final status is therefore pending verification against the Congress record, and this profile treats Peru as having no market-licensing law in force.

Tax treatment

Peru has no dedicated crypto tax statute. SUNAT confirmed in Report No. 000034-2023-SUNAT (5 July 2023) that the legal system contains no specific rule for cryptocurrencies, so gains are assessed under general income-tax principles rather than a bespoke schedule. For an individual disposing of crypto outside a business, a gain would fall under second-category (capital) income, whose effective rate in Peru is around 5%. SUNAT's superintendent Víctor Mejía announced in February 2025 a plan to amend the Income Tax Law to formalise this treatment — classifying individual crypto gains as second-category income taxed at roughly 5% — but no amendment had been enacted by mid-2026, so the individual regime remains proposal-stage and its final rate is pending verification. Where crypto activity is habitual or conducted by a company, profits are third-category (business) income taxed at the 29.5% corporate rate. Income received as crypto — from mining, staking, airdrops or payment for goods and services — is generally taxable as income when earned. Note the "tax asymmetry" flagged by Peruvian practitioners: crypto ETFs listed on the Bolsa de Valores de Lima and settled through CAVALI are treated as securities and their disposal is already taxable, whereas direct holdings sit in the current grey zone.

Travel rule applicability

Status: becomes mandatory 1 August 2026. Peru's Travel Rule lives in Chapter VIII ("Regla de Viaje") of SBS Resolution 02648-2024. When the resolution took effect in 2024 this chapter received a two-year grace period, so the obligation becomes enforceable on 1 August 2026, with a further 120-day implementation window once it goes live. It applies to VASPs incorporated or domiciled in Peru and to Peruvian branches of foreign providers. Both the sending and receiving PSAV must obtain and transmit originator and beneficiary information securely, at or before the transfer, with no size-based exemption from the duty to pass information. Data requirements are tiered at a USD 1,000 threshold: below it, a lighter data set applies; at or above it, the originator's address, date and place of birth, or a transaction identifier must be included. This aligns Peru with FATF Recommendation 16. This profile updates the earlier "partial" characterisation, which predated the fixed August 2026 commencement date.

Notable enforcement and regulatory events

Peru's regime is registration- and warning-based; regulators have not published a record of large fines against crypto firms, and the SMV and SBS act mainly through public alerts and the AML perimeter. The dated milestones that shape the market are:

Public licensed CASP list

Peru publishes no licensed-CASP register because no CASP licence exists to publish. PSAVs merely register with UIF-Perú as AML-obligated subjects; that record is an AML supervision list, not a public authorisation register of the kind maintained under MiCA in the EU or by MAS in Singapore. Until the pending Ley Marco designates the SBS as the authorising authority and creates a formal register, there is no official list of "licensed" Peruvian exchanges to mirror. In the meantime, users can consult the SBS and SMV public alerts of unauthorised entities as a negative screen. If Peru enacts the Framework Law and opens authorisations, DeFi Intel will mirror the official register. Known Peru PSAVs can be submitted to research@defi-intel.com.

Comparison to neighbours

Compare Peru crypto regulation with three geographically adjacent jurisdictions:

Colombia Brazil Chile

Doing business in Peru — practical notes

The only regulatory status Peru currently requires of a crypto business is registration with UIF-Perú as an AML-obligated PSAV, together with a working SPLAFT programme, a named compliance officer, customer due diligence and suspicious-transaction reporting under SBS Resolution 02648-2024. There is no market-conduct licence to apply for, no minimum-capital gate and no bespoke consumer-protection code — but there is also no authorisation that confers legitimacy, so firms compete on their own compliance posture. The near-term operational priority is the Travel Rule: providers serving Peruvian users must have originator/beneficiary data plumbing that meets the USD 1,000 tiered thresholds working before Chapter VIII becomes mandatory on 1 August 2026. On tax, model individual disposals at the second-category ~5% level while watching for SUNAT's Income Tax Law amendment, and corporate/habitual activity at 29.5%. Because crypto is not legal tender and Law 28194 excludes it from recognised payment means, settlement and accounting should not assume par treatment with the sol. Finally, monitor Congress: if the Ley Marco (Bill 1042-2021-CR) is enacted it would hand the SBS authorisation and registration powers and convert today's AML-only perimeter into a licensing regime. (The prior version of this profile named specific "leading platforms" and described stablecoins as "restricted"; neither claim could be verified this session, so both have been removed — stablecoins have no dedicated Peruvian regime and are handled as virtual assets.)

Methodology and sources

This profile was researched and updated by DeFi Intel's research desk on 2026-07-14 from the primary and secondary sources listed below. Claims that could not be verified against a source are omitted or marked pending — we do not republish unverified third-party datasets. Submit corrections and primary-source links to research@defi-intel.com.

Sources

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