What Law 25-10 Actually Prohibits
Algeria’s legal relationship with cryptocurrency has a history that predates 2025. A prohibition on cryptocurrency transactions was embedded in the 2018 Finance Law and reinforced in subsequent budget legislation. However, these earlier provisions targeted transactions rather than possession, and enforcement remained uneven. Law No. 25-10, adopted in July 2025, resolved this ambiguity in the most comprehensive direction possible.
The law criminalizes six categories of activity involving digital assets: possession, trading, exchange, transfer, use as a means of payment, and mining. The definition of “digital assets” in Article 2 is technology-neutral, covering assets based on distributed ledger technology, token economics, or any cryptographic mechanism of value storage or transfer. This definition encompasses not only Bitcoin and Ethereum but also stablecoins, Central Bank Digital Currency-adjacent products operated outside Bank of Algeria supervision, and algorithmically managed payment tokens issued by private entities.
Penalties scale by violation type. Individual first-time offenders face fines between 1 million and 5 million dinars (approximately USD 7,300–36,600 at current rates) and up to one year of imprisonment. Repeat offenders and commercial operators — which would include any startup maintaining a digital asset exchange, custody service, or blockchain-based payment product — face enhanced sentences of up to two years and fines doubled to 10 million dinars. The law introduces enterprise liability, meaning founding teams and board members of companies facilitating prohibited activities face personal criminal exposure in addition to corporate sanctions.
One notable provision clarifies the status of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols: access to DeFi platforms from Algerian IP addresses is treated as participation in a prohibited exchange, and Algerian-resident users who interact with such platforms — even through VPN — fall within the law’s territorial jurisdiction.
The Market Context Law 25-10 Is Responding To
Algeria’s fintech ecosystem reached approximately 120 active companies by end of 2025, according to The Fintech Times’s 2026 Algeria ecosystem review. A subset of this ecosystem had been building infrastructure that interfaced with or referenced cryptocurrency as a component: cross-border remittance startups exploring stablecoin settlement layers, DeFi yield products marketed to diaspora investors, NFT-adjacent digital collectible platforms, and blockchain-based supply chain traceability tools that incorporated tokenized value transfer mechanisms.
Law 25-10 eliminated the commercial viability of all these product categories as designed. The law does not provide a licensing pathway that would allow any of these activities to continue under regulatory supervision — unlike, for example, Singapore’s Payment Services Act, which creates a licensing regime for digital payment token services. Algeria’s approach is a full prohibition, not a supervised market.
The Bank of Algeria has simultaneously signaled that it is studying the architecture of a sovereign digital dinar — a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) — but has not announced a timeline or pilot program. Until a sovereign digital currency framework is established and legislation enacted, no digital-asset-based payment product has a legal operating basis in Algeria.
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What Fintech Founders Must Build Instead
1. Reorient Your Payment Stack to BaridiMob and CIB Rails
The two regulated payment rails available to Algerian fintech builders are the BaridiMob mobile payment platform (operated by Algérie Poste) and the interbank payment card network (CIB, Carte Interbancaire). BaridiMob processed over 35 million transactions in 2025, according to Algérie Poste’s annual figures, and its API program — launched in late 2024 — now enables third-party fintech integration. Any product previously built around a token or crypto mechanism for peer-to-peer transfer must be rebuilt on these regulated rails. The product UX implications are significant but manageable: BaridiMob offers instant transfer between any two Algérie Poste account holders, which serves the same core use case as most peer-to-peer crypto transfer products. The limitation is interoperability with private bank accounts — CIB integration requires banking partnerships that most early-stage fintechs have not yet established.
2. Redirect Remittance Products to Western Union and MoneyGram-Compatible APIs
Cross-border remittance was the most common use case that drove Algerian fintech teams toward stablecoin settlement exploration — the Algerian diaspora sends an estimated USD 1.8 billion annually [VERIFY exact figure], and traditional wire transfer fees average 6–9%. Law 25-10 eliminates the stablecoin settlement route. The viable alternative is building on the existing licensed remittance operator network: Western Union, MoneyGram, and Transferwise each maintain relationships with Algerian banking partners and operate under Bank of Algeria authorization. Fintech teams can build superior UX layers on top of these licensed operators through API or white-label partnerships, without holding settlement assets in prohibited digital form. This is a narrower business model — the margin structure differs materially — but it is the only legally viable remittance architecture until Algeria enacts a licensed payment token framework.
3. Repurpose Blockchain Infrastructure for Non-Financial Use Cases
Blockchain technology itself — as a distributed ledger — is not prohibited by Law 25-10. The prohibition targets assets with economic value stored on such ledgers. This distinction creates a viable path for Algerian teams that built blockchain expertise: pivot to supply chain traceability, document authentication, academic credential verification, and provenance tracking applications that use distributed ledger infrastructure without creating or transferring tokenized value. Sonatrach’s supply chain integrity projects and the Ministry of National Education’s credential verification initiative are both exploring blockchain-based architectures according to sector reporting. Teams with distributed ledger development capability can position as infrastructure providers for these public-sector projects without requiring any form of token economics.
4. Engage with the ARPCE Mobile Money Licensing Framework
Algeria’s telecommunications regulator, ARPCE, published the first version of its mobile money service licensing framework in 2024. This framework enables telecom operators and their fintech partners to offer mobile money services — stored-value accounts, airtime-to-cash conversion, and merchant payment acceptance — under ARPCE supervision. Unlike crypto products, mobile money operates within an explicitly defined regulatory perimeter and has precedent across the continent: the M-Pesa model in Kenya and the Orange Money network across West Africa both operate under equivalent regulatory structures. Algerian telecom operators Djezzy, Ooredoo, and Mobilis all have active mobile money license applications or exploratory engagements with ARPCE. Fintechs that can provide technology partnerships — wallet infrastructure, merchant integration, fraud detection — to these operators have a viable path to scale within the legal framework.
The Structural Lesson
Law 25-10 reflects a deliberate regulatory philosophy: Algeria is building its digital payment infrastructure on state-supervised rails rather than permissionless decentralized systems. This is not unique to Algeria — China’s prohibition of private cryptocurrency, India’s restrictive taxation framework, and Saudi Arabia’s cautious approach all represent variations of the same state-centric digital finance model.
The lesson for Algerian fintech builders is that the competitive advantage in this market does not come from exploiting regulatory ambiguity — it comes from becoming the most capable builder on the regulated rails that do exist. BaridiMob’s API program, ARPCE’s mobile money framework, and CIB’s interoperability expansion are all genuinely underserved from a fintech product perspective. The startups that win the Algerian fintech market over the next three years will be those that build the best products on these legal foundations — not those that wait for crypto regulation to change.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Algeria’s Law 25-10 prohibit blockchain technology itself or only cryptocurrencies?
Law 25-10 prohibits digital assets with economic value — cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and tokenized instruments — not distributed ledger technology itself. Blockchain infrastructure used for supply chain traceability, document authentication, or credential verification without tokenized value transfer falls outside the law’s prohibitions. Algerian teams with blockchain development expertise can legally operate in these non-financial use cases.
What payment alternatives are legally available to Algerian fintech startups?
The two primary regulated payment rails are BaridiMob (operated by Algérie Poste, with a third-party API program launched in late 2024) and the CIB interbank card network. ARPCE’s mobile money licensing framework also enables telecom-operator-partnered mobile money services. Cross-border remittance must route through Bank of Algeria-authorized licensed operators such as Western Union and MoneyGram.
What are the criminal penalties for operating a crypto product in Algeria after Law 25-10?
Individual first-time violations carry fines of 1–5 million Algerian dinars (approximately USD 7,300–36,600) and up to one year imprisonment. Commercial operators and repeat offenders face up to two years imprisonment and fines up to 10 million dinars. The law extends criminal exposure to founding team members and board directors personally, not only to the corporate entity.
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Sources & Further Reading
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