Regime commences 9 April 2027. Rightlander helps Australian and APAC crypto platforms monitor affiliates, influencers and paid search for licence exposure, so compliance never becomes the thing that holds up an AFSL application.
Book a readiness call See crypto solution

Australia is about to rewrite its crypto rulebook. The Digital Assets Framework Act received Royal Assent on 8 April 2026, and the full regime goes live on 9 April 2027. For anyone running an affiliate programme into the Australian market, that's your deadline. This is the short version. The detailed readiness playbook is here.

What's changing in one paragraph

Until now, crypto marketing in Australia has lived in a grey area. AUSTRAC covered anti-money-laundering. ASIC published interim guidance (INFO 225) on how existing law applied to digital assets. The rest ran on the general rule that you can't mislead consumers. From April 2027, there is a proper licensing regime. Exchanges and custody platforms will need an Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL). Affiliate content that promotes those services sits inside that licensing perimeter. Miss a risk warning and it stops being a brand problem. It becomes a licensing problem.

The three labels to know

The new rules create three overlapping categories. Most exchanges will be all three at once.

  • VASP (Virtual Asset Service Provider). Already in force, expanded 31 March 2026. Run by AUSTRAC. Triggered by offering a crypto exchange or transfer service, custodial or not. Focus: AML and KYC.
  • DAP (Digital Asset Platform). New from 9 April 2027. Run by ASIC. Triggered by holding client assets, think exchange, broking, market-making. Focus: market integrity and client protection.
  • TCP (Tokenised Custody Platform). New from 9 April 2027. Run by ASIC. Triggered by issuing tokens backed by real-world assets. Focus: token integrity and safekeeping.

Three things that change for affiliate teams

  • Marketing is now a licensing question. Any affiliate, influencer or paid-search ad that promotes a DAP or TCP into Australia is operating inside the new licensing perimeter. Missing risk warnings and unsubstantiated performance claims stop being a reputational risk and start being a regulatory one.
  • Affiliate sign-up pages are a privacy chain. From 31 March 2026 the modernised customer-due-diligence rules apply. Full ID-copy retention is out. Any affiliate running a pre-fill landing page creates a data chain the platform is responsible for.
  • The definition of "crypto" just widened. The new rules cover cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, NFTs that act like financial products, and tokenised real-world assets. An affiliate network that started promoting Bitcoin trading may now be driving traffic to a tokenised money-market fund, which is a very different regulatory footprint.

The dates to put in the calendar

  • 31 March 2026. New customer-due-diligence rules apply. No full ID-copy retention.
  • June 2026. INFO 225 no-action relief expires. Existing licensing requirements apply in full.
  • 1 July 2026. Tranche 2 AML/CTF reforms in force. Travel Rule enforced.
  • 29 July 2026. Final AUSTRAC enrolment deadline.
  • Q4 2026. DAP and TCP licence applications open.
  • 9 April 2027. DAF Act regime commences. ASIC supervision live.

What to do this quarter

Five practical moves we'd make in the next 90 days, whether you're a platform, a network or an agency running crypto partners.

  • Inventory your partners. Not the ones in the tracker, all of them. Sub-affiliates, influencers, review sites, paid search bidders. You cannot remediate what you cannot see.
  • Retire pre-2026 creative. Anything promising no-KYC sign-up, anything with a US-flavoured disclaimer, anything leaning on INFO 225 wording that will not survive June.
  • Refresh privacy notices. OAIC-aligned, purpose-limited, no full ID-copy retention. Every partner landing page, not just yours.
  • Map each partner to VASP, DAP or TCP. This tells you which partners are driving traffic into a product you have not yet licensed for, and gives you a clean view of what needs to change before Q4 2026.
  • Put a pre-approval gate in place. No new partner creative goes live without review. No exceptions. Capture the evidence in a form you can show a regulator.

Where Rightlander fits

Rightlander scans every landing page, review site, social account and paid-search ad that a partner runs. For platforms preparing for the DAF Act, three capabilities do most of the work: affiliate publisher compliance, brand protection and PPC monitoring, and sub-affiliate transparency. The readiness programme is compliance and editorial work, not engineering, and it plugs into the networks and trackers APAC operators already use.

Want the deeper version? Our full readiness playbook covers the six risks we see in AFSL readiness reviews, a 12-month plan mapped to ASIC's roadmap, and the five questions to ask your compliance lead this quarter.
Read the playbook →

Sources: ASIC Information Sheet 225, Digital Assets Framework Act 2026, AUSTRAC Tranche 1 and Tranche 2 guidance, ASIC 18-month implementation roadmap (published 20 April 2026).