Luno, the cryptocurrency exchange that started in South Africa and is now owned by US-based Digital Currency Group, is cutting 20% of its global headcount and reorganising the business into three separate units, CEO James Lanigan said on Tuesday.

The company did not disclose how many employees are affected. The job cuts were first reported earlier on Tuesday by Bloomberg News.

South African jobs are among those going, but Luno would not say how many.

“Luno is running the required, thorough consultation process with all affected South Africa employees and is not in a position to confirm precise numbers at this stage,” a spokesman told TechCentral.

In South Africa, dismissals for operational requirements are governed by section 189 of the Labour Relations Act, which obliges employers to consult affected staff before retrenchments take effect.

Luno is headquartered in London and has operations across Africa and Asia.

“This was a very difficult decision, and we did not take it lightly,” Lanigan said. “We have incredible people across this organisation, and saying goodbye to colleagues who have contributed so much is hard. But it is a decision we’ve had to make – for our customers, our remaining team and our long-term mission – which is to build a structure that is sustainable and focused.”

Why now?

Luno attributed the cuts to two things: a downturn in retail crypto trading, which it described as a phase of a cycle it has seen repeatedly since its founding in 2013, and its own investment in automation. The company said it “is continuing to integrate and develop tools that are rapidly changing the resource model required to run the business effectively”, and that a leaner structure was therefore “both necessary and appropriate”.

It is the second round of deep cuts at the company in three and a half years. In January 2023, at the depth of the last crypto winter, Luno axed 35% of its workforce — then about 960 people — affecting more than 330 staff. “2022 has been an incredibly tough year for the broader tech industry and in particular the crypto market,” the company said at the time.

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Lanigan, previously chief operating officer, was elevated to CEO two months after those cuts, replacing co-founder Marcus Swanepoel, who moved to executive chairman. Digital Currency Group, an investor in Luno since its 2014 seed round, acquired the company outright in September 2020.

The first of the three units combines Luno’s existing retail exchange with a new “crypto as a service” offering. The retail business serves more than 16 million users across Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, with trading, staking and payment products spanning crypto as well as tokenised equities, commodities and exchange-traded funds.

The service extension opens that infrastructure to partners through an API, letting them offer crypto under their own brands while Luno supplies the liquidity, custody, wallet infrastructure and compliance behind it.

The template is Discovery Bank, which in November 2025 began offering crypto trading through Luno, giving its clients access to more than 50 cryptocurrencies inside the banking app. Discovery Bank CEO Hylton Kallner said at the time the move was “a clear signal that crypto is moving from a niche asset and becoming a mainstream investment”.

The second unit covers stablecoins and wallet infrastructure, and rests on Luno’s observation that 98% of global stablecoin supply is denominated in US dollars.

Its answer is Zaru, a rand-backed stablecoin launched in February 2026, which the company describes as South Africa’s first institutional-grade, reserve-backed rand stablecoin issued by a regulated entity. Luno said Zaru enables same-day settlement in rand, domestically and internationally, around the clock and at near-zero cost, and that it is built on an embed-and-license model. Network partners named by the company include EasyEquities, Lesaka, Sanlam and Standard Bank.

Luno said Zaru is the first of a broader push into emerging markets where local-currency stablecoin infrastructure remains limited.

Narrower footprint

The third unit is global settlements, an institutional business aimed at the cost, speed and reliability of moving money across borders. It comprises an over-the-counter desk for large-block currency and crypto conversions, and a settlement network offering same-day cross-border payments with entity-level compliance, full audit trails and no cut-off times. Luno summarised the ambition as “any pair, any volume, anywhere Luno operates”.

“The three business lines are not separate companies – they are three expressions of a single, shared platform,” Lanigan said.

The job cuts follow a narrowing of Luno’s geographic footprint. The company has told customers in a number of regions that it will stop providing services to them from 1 September 2026, when their accounts will be permanently closed. Deposits and buying were disabled on 1 June and the deadline to send crypto off the platform passed on 29 June. Customers have until 31 August to sell and withdraw to a bank account.

“Going forward, we want to focus on our core markets across Africa and South East Asia,” Luno told affected customers. “This decision was not taken lightly and we sincerely apologise for the disruption.”

The restructuring reflects a broader shift across the crypto industry, as exchanges chase more stable revenue from institutional clients, payments and financial infrastructure while retail trading activity stays volatile. — © 2026 NewsCentral Media