FCA Told UK Crypto-ATM Operators to Shut Down or Face Enforcement

The Financial Conduct Authority told operators of cryptocurrency ATMs in the United Kingdom on March 11, 2022 to shut their machines or face enforcement action. The regulator said crypto ATMs providing exchange services had to be registered under the UK Money Laundering Regulations, and that none of the cryptoasset firms on its register had been approved to provide those services. On that basis, any crypto ATM then operating in the country was operating illegally.

The development mattered because the FCA moved from administering a registration perimeter to issuing a sector-wide shutdown instruction. Cash-to-crypto kiosks were a small access channel compared with online exchanges, but they sat at a sensitive intersection of physical cash, pseudonymous digital assets and anti-money-laundering controls.

An enforcement action, not a ban on the machine

The March 11 notice did not make the technology of a crypto ATM permanently unlawful. Its logic was conditional: a business offering cryptoasset exchange services through a kiosk needed FCA registration and compliance with the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds Regulations 2017. Because no registered firm had approval to offer the service, every operating machine fell outside that perimeter.

That distinction also defined the FCA’s role on March 11. The action concerned anti-money-laundering supervision, not a finding that bitcoin itself was illegal or that every cryptoasset activity was comprehensively regulated. The FCA separately repeated its view that cryptoassets were high-risk and that consumers were unlikely to have protection if something went wrong. That warning did not convert the shutdown instruction into deposit insurance, investment approval or a judgment on any token’s value.

Crypto ATMs can allow a customer to exchange banknotes for cryptoassets and, in some configurations, sell cryptoassets for cash. The reviewed records do not establish a regulator-verified count of machines active on March 11, so no national machine total is used here.

The Gidiplus decision behind the warning

The FCA linked its action to Gidiplus Limited, a crypto-ATM operator whose registration application it had refused. An Upper Tribunal decision dated February 16, 2022 shows that the refusal ended the firm’s temporary registration. Gidiplus asked the tribunal to suspend that effect while its underlying appeal remained pending.

The tribunal dismissed the suspension request. Judge Timothy Herrington concluded that Gidiplus had not supplied the detailed evidence needed to show it would operate in a broadly compliant way pending the appeal. The decision recorded FCA concerns about the firm’s business-wide and customer risk assessments, customer due diligence, enhanced due diligence and transaction monitoring.

The ruling was not a final determination of Gidiplus’s underlying appeal and did not prove that every crypto ATM facilitated crime. It established that this applicant had not met the test for temporary relief from the FCA’s refusal. The March 11 warning then applied the regulator’s broader registration position to operators across the country.

Why the boundary mattered

Institutionally, the notice showed how the UK’s existing money-laundering framework could constrain a crypto business model without waiting for a comprehensive digital-asset statute. Operators faced a practical choice: stop providing the service or risk enforcement while lacking the required registration.

For users, the immediate consequence concerned availability and legal status of the kiosks, not a verified change in bitcoin’s market price. No price, volume or return is attributed to the notice because the reviewed sources do not isolate a causal market reaction on a named venue and measurement window.

Later clarification

In a May 11, 2022 freedom-of-information response, the FCA said that by April 12 it had contacted 23 crypto-ATM operators and 56 stores where machines might be operating. It estimated that 20 to 30 unregistered machines might still be active, but explicitly described that estimate as based on unverified open-source information. Those figures clarify the follow-through and uncertainty; they were not available on March 11.