GIGX, KuCoin join SEC’s latest ARIP cohort, as the logistics-born wallet stakes its regulatory claim

Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission didn’t wait long for a second announcement. A day after clearing seven virtual asset platforms into its Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Programme (ARIP), the Commission quietly added two more names on July 3: GIGX Technologies and KuCoin Nigeria Limited.

It’s a smaller update than the first cohort, but not a minor one. Both firms now hold an Approval-in-Principle (AIP). This conditional clearance allows them to operate within the SEC’s sandbox while working toward full registration under the Investments and Securities Act 2025.

Neither has a finished licence yet, and both remain under active supervision, but the addition brings the total number of VASPs to pass through ARIP since its 2024 launch to over 10, a sharp jump for a programme that sat with just two names, Busha and Quidax, for nearly two years.

For KuCoin, a global exchange with an existing international footprint, the approval is largely a formality of scale. For GIGX, it’s something closer to validation.

Built through a stint in the Techstars Toronto accelerator, the platform has been developing a digital wallet that integrates payments, savings, and decentralised finance tools rather than positioning itself as a straightforward exchange.

That distinction matters for how the company frames this approval: not as permission to trade crypto, but as a licence to build financial infrastructure.

What the approval means for GIGX

“Virtual assets are becoming a major part of the infrastructure of global finance, and being accepted into the SEC’s ARIP allows GIGX to build products that are trusted locally, competitive globally and capable of connecting African businesses and consumers to the rapidly evolving global economy,” said Osamede Arhunmwunde, GIGX’s CEO.

It’s a line that leans on ambition more than specifics, but it tracks with the company’s stated direction. GIGX has consistently pitched itself less as a trading platform and more as a bridge between everyday African users and cross-border digital finance, savings, remittances, and DeFi access, wrapped into one product rather than sold as separate crypto tools.

Arhunmwunde pushed that framing further: “Our goal remains to build simple, trusted products that make it easier for African businesses and consumers to move value across borders and participate in the global digital economy. We are not here to add another financial product; we are here to help build the infrastructure that connects Africa to the future of money.”

Whether that infrastructure ambition survives contact with the SEC’s actual conditions is the more interesting question. An AIP is not a finish line; it typically runs for up to 12 months, during which firms must keep proving they can manage customer funds, satisfy anti-money laundering obligations and meet the Commission’s fidelity bond and shareholder-funds thresholds before qualifying for full registration.

The bigger context, as covered in our earlier piece on the first seven approvals, is the Investments and Securities Act 2025, which for the first time gives the SEC explicit statutory authority to regulate digital asset exchanges as market infrastructure rather than platforms operating at the regulator’s discretion.

Two approval batches in 48 hours suggest the Commission is moving faster than its own track record over the past two years would predict.

For Nigerian users, the practical takeaway hasn’t changed: an AIP means a platform is under supervision, not that it’s fully licensed. The SEC has repeatedly urged the public to verify any platform’s regulatory status through its official channels before engaging, advice that applies as much to GIGX and KuCoin now as it did to the seven names cleared the day before them.

Also read: SEC clears Luno, GetEquity and 5 other crypto exchanges to operate in Nigeria