Thailand SEC Proposes $148,000 Daily Cap on Stablecoin Transfers

5 Million Baht a Day, Per Platform

Thailand's securities regulator has drafted a rule that would limit stablecoin deposits and withdrawals to 5 million baht, about $148,000, per customer each day on each licensed crypto exchange. Published through the regulator's official announcement on Thursday, November 12, the proposal is open for public comment until November 26 and would take effect 60 days after a final rule is announced. The SEC frames the measure as a defense against money laundering, online crime and unlicensed cross-border money movement.

The cap works in two directions. A customer could deposit up to 5 million baht and withdraw up to 5 million baht on the same platform within one day, and because the limit is set per platform, a person holding accounts at several Thai operators would carry a separate daily allowance on each. The same figure applies whether the customer moves funds into a single account or splits them across several, since the ceiling attaches to the person-platform pair rather than to any one account. Transfers between a customer's own accounts on two licensed platforms sit outside the cap, provided both venues comply with the Travel Rule, the standard that obliges them to exchange sender and recipient information.

Counterparties face their own restriction. Deposits and withdrawals would run only through accounts and wallets verified as the customer's own, and sending to or receiving from a third party would be barred. Direct peer-to-peer transfers between individuals, which never touch a licensed venue, fall outside the rule entirely. In practice, the caps would bite hardest on customers moving stablecoins from Thai platforms toward foreign exchanges or into a self-custody crypto wallet, since those routes remove the licensed intermediary that monitors the flow.

Tighter Duties for Platforms and Brokers

Licensed platforms would take on heavier duties under the same draft. They would have to run customer due diligence and risk classification, monitor how funds move through their services, identify accounts used for illegal payments, and use blockchain analytics tools to trace transfers linked to suspicious or watchlisted wallets. The SEC additionally expects the scale of stablecoin flows into and out of an account to stay consistent with the customer's income and financial situation, a test that reaches beyond simple transaction limits.

Market structure rules tighten in parallel. Exchanges would have to disclose the names of the market makers they work with and the assets those firms quote, giving customers visibility into who supplies liquidity on their order books. Market makers are the firms that continuously post buy and sell prices so customer orders fill quickly. Brokers, by contrast, would be barred from relying on outside liquidity providers in stablecoin-baht pairs, and trades arranged by brokers or dealers away from an exchange would carry a minimum ticket of 3 million baht, about $88,500, with prices made public. The floor and the disclosure requirement apply to over-the-counter trades that bypass an exchange's order book.

Several flows escape the daily cap entirely. A platform's own operational transfers, market maker activity, transactions the Bank of Thailand approves, and purchases or refunds of new tokens through SEC-approved ICO platforms all sit outside the ceiling. Refunds from those token sales would count the same way, outside the customer's normal daily allowance. The token-sale exemption is the one substantive change from the consultation the SEC opened on September 11, 2026; the core framework carries over unchanged. The package extends work already under way, as the SEC and the central bank have applied data analysis to flag unusual USDT trading within a broader campaign against the gray economy.

The per-platform design is the detail that decides how binding this becomes. A single market-wide ceiling would have set one limit; the draft instead multiplies the allowance by the number of venues a customer uses, which softens the restriction for active users while pushing platforms to identify the same person across firms. The self-custody and peer-to-peer carve-outs cut the other way: they could shift larger transfers off licensed venues entirely, weakening the traceability the SEC says it is chasing. Platform compliance teams also carry the cost of the analytics and Travel Rule data exchange the draft requires, an overhead smaller venues may struggle to absorb. If comments close on November 26 and the final text lands in December, the 60-day runway after announcement points to a February start.