Is crypto legal in Cameroon? Rules & regulation (2026)

BEAC Governor Yvon Sana Bangui publicly committed to a CBDC pegged 1:1 to the CFA franc, warning that dollar-backed private stablecoins would drain CEMAC foreign-exchange reserves and undermine monetary sovereignty, signalling that any digital-currency future in Cameroon will be state-issued, not crypto-based.

Regulation No. 01/24/CEMAC/UMAC/COBAC (signed 20 December 2024) on the agrément unique for credit establishments took effect 1 January 2025, consolidating CEMAC banking licensing; while not crypto-specific, it restructures the institutional gateway through which any future crypto-credit products would be assessed.

At the first CEMAC Fintech Forum in Douala (29-31 January 2024), BEAC's Director-General of Operations explicitly rejected industry calls to regulate crypto, arguing that purchasing crypto with CFA francs would deplete shared foreign-exchange reserves and weaken the currency, the clearest on-record policy statement against any regulatory opening.

President Paul Biya signed a decree establishing a Coordination Committee to steer anti-money-laundering, counter-terrorist-financing, and counter-proliferation policies, including oversight of COBAC-mandated monthly crypto-transaction reporting, a direct governance response to the June 2023 FATF grey-listing.

A government-commissioned study presented by the Ministry of Finance estimated nearly 900,000 cryptocurrency users in Cameroon (6.76% of the active population), ranking the country 11th in Africa, dramatically illustrating the gap between widespread informal crypto use and the complete absence of any national legal framework.

The Financial Action Task Force added Cameroon to its 'jurisdictions under increased monitoring' list, citing strategic deficiencies in AML/CFT supervision, including inadequate oversight of virtual-asset service providers; Cameroon remained on the grey list through at least February 2026, creating strong external pressure to formalise crypto enforcement.

The CEMAC capital-market regulator COSUMAF published Regulation nº 01/22, defining virtual assets, ICOs, and Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) and requiring COSUMAF approval to offer digital-asset custody, trading-platform, or portfolio-management services, the first formal regulatory pathway for compliant crypto activity in the zone, though implementing instructions remained pending.

The Central African Republic suspended its April 2022 Bitcoin-as-legal-tender law after BEAC Governor Abbas Mahamat Tolli declared it void under the CEMAC Monetary Cooperation Agreement; the episode confirmed that BEAC's veto authority overrides any member-state crypto legislation, directly defining the legal ceiling for Cameroon as well.

The Central African Banking Commission issued Decision D-2022/071 prohibiting all banks, microfinance institutions, and payment service providers across CEMAC, including Cameroon, from holding, trading, exchanging, or settling any cryptocurrency; institutions must file detailed monthly reports on any detected crypto activity with COBAC and BEAC.

The Central African Republic (a CEMAC monetary-union peer of Cameroon) enacted Law n°22.004 making Bitcoin legal tender, the first such law in Africa, forcing BEAC and COBAC to publicly assert their override authority and directly precipitating the May 2022 zone-wide institutional ban.

The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MINPOSTEL) held a workshop in Yaoundé on 'challenges, opportunities, and risks of cryptocurrency in Cameroon' and announced it was developing a regulatory white paper, the government's first formal signal of legislative intent; the white paper was never published and no national crypto law has been enacted to date.

The government contracted Indian software company Trestor to trial a state-issued digital currency called 'Trest'; the pilot collapsed due to prohibitive electricity costs for transaction processing, an early experiment with sovereign digital money that predated any crypto-regulatory framework and foreshadowed BEAC's later preference for a state-controlled digital CFA franc.