The LSE Directory / Crypto exchanges
Luno is a cryptocurrency exchange and custodial wallet platform that lets retail customers buy, sell, store and earn yield on Bitcoin, Ethereum and a broader list of digital assets through a mobile app and web interface, alongside a separate professional venue, Luno Pro, aimed at active and institutional traders with deeper order book liquidity and lower fees. The core retail product bundles a simple buy and sell flow with staking (including Ethereum and Cardano), recurring "bundles" of multiple coins in a single purchase, and, more recently, tokenised US stock and ETF trading. Where many large exchanges compete on trading volume in the US, Europe and East Asia, Luno has built its business around retail crypto adoption in emerging markets, principally South Africa, Nigeria, Malaysia and Indonesia, with local currency funding rails (ZAR, NGN, MYR, IDR) rather than a crypto only on ramp. It was the first exchange fully licensed by Malaysia's Securities Commission, in 2019, and holds a financial service provider license from South Africa's FSCA since 2024. Since 2022 its custody and staking infrastructure has run on Fireblocks' multi party computation wallet technology in place of an earlier in house multisig system; Luno credits the partnership with roughly tripling the number of coins and tokens it can support. The company was founded in Cape Town in 2013 as BitX by Marcus Swanepoel, Timothy Stranex and Pieter Heyns, and renamed Luno in January 2017. It is headquartered in London, with additional offices in Cape Town and Singapore. Digital Currency Group (DCG), the crypto holding company that also owns Grayscale Investments and Foundry, had been a Luno investor since its 2014 seed round and acquired the company outright in September 2020; Luno continues to operate as an independently run, wholly owned DCG subsidiary. Swanepoel moved to executive chairman in March 2023, when then chief operating officer James Lanigan became CEO. Luno is registered, though not fully authorised, with the UK Financial Conduct Authority under its cryptoasset anti money laundering regime, and reported around 15 million customers across more than 40 countries in early 2026. In February 2026, Luno joined South African financial institutions Standard Bank, Sanlam Specialised Asset Management, EasyEquities and Lesaka to launch ZAR Universal (ZARU), an institutional only stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the rand; Standard Bank holds the underlying cash reserves, Sanlam manages them, and Moore Johannesburg performs monthly reserve audits. The following month, Luno launched crypto only prediction markets in South Africa and Nigeria with US infrastructure partner Limitless, a peer to peer product letting users take short term positions on whether Bitcoin, Ether or Solana will finish above or below a target price; Luno takes a fee rather than the other side of the trade.
