Japan’s Financial Services Agency has officially licensed 11 bitcoin exchanges as part of the government’s move to bring cryptocurrency trading under supervision following its decision to legalize bitcoin as a legal payment method in April.

According to reports, the licensed bitcoin exchanges will have to comply with a range of requirements, including building a strong computer system, segregating customer accounts and checking the identity of customers, the last to assure that the exchanges are not used for money laundering.

A full list of which bitcoin exchanges were awarded licenses were not available at the time of writing, but it is known that Japan’s largest bitcoin exchange bitFlyer Inc. was on the list along with QUOINE Corp.

“Japan has been exploding with demand for both bitcoin trading as well as virtual currency services,” bitFlyer said in a statement. “The FSA’s approval for bitFlyer to operate as a Registered Virtual Currency Exchange, and the agency’s openness and forward thinking regulation could not come at a better time for the Blockchain space.”

Mike Kayamori, chief executive officer and co-founder of QUIONE, said in a separate statement that “as the first global crypto fintech company to be fully licensed with the JFSA, we will keep on working hand in hand with regulators and other stakeholders towards the healthy development of the cryptocurrency industry within Japan and on a global scale.”

“Protection of customers’ assets is of the highest priority to us,” he added. “With our JFSA license, this is a positive market signal that we are here to build a trusted exchange, with proper compliance measures in place to prevent security breaches and provide more asset protection for our customers.”

Japan’s move to license bitcoin exchanges comes at a time its neighbors in Asia have moved in the opposite direction, restricting and in some cases outright banning the use of cryptocurrencies. China started the trend, first banning initial coin offerings before going further and banning bitcoin exchanges altogether. South Korea is currently going down a similar path, having also banned ICOs with speculation that it may extend that ban to general cryptocurrency trading as well.

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