Can I use a Botswana card or bank account on Bybit?

No. Botswana is named in the General Fiat Service section of Bybit's restricted issuing countries page, which covers fiat deposit, fiat withdrawal and One-Click Buy, and it is named again under the SEPA sub-list. Botswana is also absent from Bybit's separate list of countries supported for card payment, while fifteen other African countries appear there. The restriction follows the country that issued the card, not where you are.

Does Botswana restrict moving money abroad?

No. The Bank of Botswana records that all remaining exchange controls were abolished in February 1999, having acceded to IMF Article VIII status in November 1995. That is a real advantage over most of the region, and it means the friction you meet is Bybit's own fiat restriction rather than a Botswana capital rule.

What tax do I pay on crypto gains in Botswana?

Nobody can tell you with authority, because the revenue service has not said. BURS has published no guidance mentioning virtual, digital or crypto assets, and neither the 2025 nor the 2026 Budget Speech mentions them. Botswana also replaced its main tax statutes with effect from 1 July 2026. Treat the position as unsettled and take local advice rather than trusting a confident number from a comparison site.

Bybit in Botswana: a licence regime it is not part of

Updated 2026-09-19

Botswana is the rare African market where the exchange is the one on the back foot. The country runs a working licensing regime for crypto businesses, with a regulator that has issued licences, named firms it says are operating illegally, and published a travel-rule threshold. Bybit is not part of any of it, and it blocks Botswana-issued cards on top.

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That combination is worth understanding properly, because almost every page written about Botswana and crypto gets the direction of the problem backwards.

What Bybit blocks, and where

Two separate Bybit pages matter, and conflating them is the standard error. The first closes the platform entirely to a short list of jurisdictions — the United States, mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada and a handful of sanctioned territories. Botswana is not on it. The platform is open.

The second blocks fiat rails by the country that issued your card or account, and Botswana is on it twice: once in the general section covering fiat deposit, fiat withdrawal and One-Click Buy, and again under the SEPA sub-list for euro transfers. That page was revised on 18 September 2026. Botswana is not named under the SWIFT sub-lists, but do not read that as a working route, because the general restriction is the broader one and it already covers the services you would use.

A third page settles it. Bybit publishes the countries supported for card payment, last updated on 26 June 2026, and fifteen African countries appear there — Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Senegal, Malawi, Mozambique and others. Botswana is absent. Three Bybit pages, one consistent answer.

We could not establish whether the pula is quotable on Bybit's peer-to-peer desk. Bybit publishes no currency matrix for P2P anywhere in its help centre, so we are not going to guess in either direction. How the desk itself works is covered in our P2P guide.

A law that says it reaches offshore platforms

Here is the fact that makes Botswana different. The governing statute is now the Virtual Assets Act, Act No. 4 of 2025, which commenced on 24 January 2025 and repealed the original Virtual Assets Act, Act No. 3 of 2022, assented on 25 February 2022. Most competitor pages still cite the 2022 Act. The re-enactment was debated in Parliament as a fix for drafting problems in the definitions.

Section 3 of the Act applies it to any virtual asset service provider carrying on business "into or from Botswana, irrespective of the physical location from which the activity is carried out". NBFIRA restates the same point in its own published FAQ. That language is deliberately extraterritorial: it does not stop at firms incorporated in Gaborone.

The regulator is NBFIRA, the Non-Bank Financial Institutions Regulatory Authority, not the Bank of Botswana — a distinction most write-ups get wrong. It licenses two categories: virtual asset service providers, and issuers of initial token offerings. The application fee is P5,000, and an applicant must hold cash equal to half its estimated gross operating costs for the next twelve months on top of whatever base capital NBFIRA sets. NBFIRA's transitional window closed on 31 May 2022, after which, in its own words, unlicensed operators "are operating illegally".

It has used that power. Yellow Card Botswana was granted a licence by public notice on 10 October 2022. Berry Crypto Trading Platform was declared unlicensed on 12 December 2022, and FS Global Properties Limited Botswana on 13 March 2023, both with the public warned to refrain from doing business with them. In March 2025 NBFIRA issued AML guidance for virtual asset businesses carrying a travel-rule threshold of P10,000 — around 757 dollars at the Bank of Botswana rate for 18 September 2026 of 13.21 pula to the dollar.

The register with nobody on it

NBFIRA maintains a page titled "Virtual Assets Service Provider Regulated Entities". It lists no entities. Not a short list — none.

We checked it twice. The page exists as a framework with contact details and zero names on it, and NBFIRA's 2024 annual report gives no count either. So a country with a licensing statute, a named licensee announced by press notice, and two named enforcement targets does not publish a usable public register of who is actually licensed. That is worth knowing before you rely on "licensed in Botswana" as a signal about anyone.

What this means for you, precisely

Be careful here, because it is easy to overstate in both directions.

The Act's duty falls on providers. NBFIRA has never named Bybit or any offshore exchange in a public notice, has issued no statement addressed to residents about using unlicensed platforms, and its 2025 AML guidance says in terms that it applies to entities licensed and supervised by NBFIRA. There is no published Botswana rule making it an offence for you to hold an account somewhere unlicensed.

What is true is narrower and still useful: you would be dealing with a platform that Botswana's own law claims authority over and that has not sought authorisation under it. If something goes wrong, the regulator that would ordinarily be your route of complaint has no supervisory relationship with the firm. That is a real difference from a licensed local provider, and it is the honest version of the warning. The general approach to judging platforms on their own disclosures is in is Bybit safe.

Money in and out: the pula is free, the rails are not

Botswana abolished all remaining exchange controls in February 1999, having taken IMF Article VIII status in November 1995, and the Bank of Botswana says so on its own history and milestones pages. There is no Botswana capital rule stopping a resident from buying a foreign asset.

Hold that against the fiat restriction and the shape of the problem becomes clear. Botswana is one of the freest countries in the region for moving your own money, and the obstacle you actually meet is a policy set in Dubai rather than in Gaborone. That inverts the usual regional story, where the state is the constraint and the exchange is open. Route planning starts with the deposit guide.

Mobile money and the flat-fee cliff

The domestic rails have a quirk worth exploiting. Mascom's MyZaka prices cash withdrawal in bands that climb steadily, reaching P175 on a P10,000 withdrawal, which is 1.75%, and it caps transfers at P10,000 — roughly 757 dollars. Transfers to a registered recipient are a flat P5.

BTC's Smega prices differently. Its cash-out bands rise to P46.82, and then everything from P2,001 to P10,000 costs a flat P93.64. At the top of that band it is 0.94%, cheaper than MyZaka. At the bottom of it, on a P2,001 withdrawal, the same flat fee is 4.68%. If you are cashing out on Smega there is a real penalty for withdrawing just over the threshold and a real saving in batching to the top of the band. Orange Money caps a wallet balance at P30,000, about 2,271 dollars.

Two honest gaps. Orange does not publish its single-transaction or daily limits anywhere we could reach, and the Bank of Botswana's Electronic Payment Services Regulations are posted as a scanned image, so the operator figures above are operator-published rather than confirmed statutory limits. And while no mobile money levy appears in the 2026/27 Budget Speech of 9 February 2026, that is an absence in one document rather than proof that no levy exists anywhere.

Tax: an absence, not an exemption

BURS has published nothing on virtual, digital or crypto assets. Not a practice note, not a ruling, and no mention in the 2025 or 2026 Budget Speeches. Botswana also rewrote its tax statutes, with a new Income Tax Act, Value Added Tax Act and Tax Administration Act taking effect from 1 July 2026, and the 2026 Budget Speech added a top bracket at P400,001 and above carrying an additional 2.5%.

Plenty of pages will tell you crypto gains are free of capital gains tax in Botswana. The reasoning usually offered is that the tax system is source-based and that crypto is neither immovable property nor a marketable security. That reasoning is not obviously wrong, but no BURS document says it, and the statutes it would turn on were replaced in July 2026. We are not going to print a number the revenue service has never confirmed. Ask a Botswana adviser.

KYC and the Omang

Batswana verify on the Omang, the national identity card; BTC states plainly that it takes "Omang for Batswana and Passport for foreign nationals". Bybit accepts passport, identity card, residence permit and driving licence, issued by your country of origin and showing photo, name, date of birth, document number and issue date, and its FAQ of 20 August 2026 states that it does not accept e-copies or scanned images. No African country is named anywhere in that FAQ, so the Omang qualifies by virtue of being a national identity card rather than because Bybit says so. Verification precedes trading, and the sequence is in our KYC guide.

Botswana ends up an odd case: the money is free to move, the law is unusually developed, and the exchange has shut the convenient door. Check the country table on the availability page, read the withdrawal guide before you need it, and compare with Zambia, whose fiat rails are open, and South Africa, where the exchange works through a licensed local representative rather than around one.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use a Botswana card or bank account on Bybit?: No. Botswana is named in the General Fiat Service section of Bybit's restricted issuing countries page, which covers fiat deposit, fiat withdrawal and One-Click Buy, and it is named again under the SEPA sub-list. Botswana is also absent from Bybit's separate list of countries supported for card payment, while fifteen other African countries appear there. The restriction follows the country that issued the card, not where you are.
Is Bybit licensed in Botswana?: No, and this is the unusual part. Botswana genuinely licenses virtual asset service providers through NBFIRA under the Virtual Assets Act, and the Act states that it applies to providers carrying on business into or from Botswana irrespective of physical location. Bybit does not appear among the licensees. NBFIRA has never named Bybit in a public notice, and the licensing duty in the Act falls on the provider rather than on you as a customer.
Does Botswana restrict moving money abroad?: No. The Bank of Botswana records that all remaining exchange controls were abolished in February 1999, having acceded to IMF Article VIII status in November 1995. That is a real advantage over most of the region, and it means the friction you meet is Bybit's own fiat restriction rather than a Botswana capital rule.
What tax do I pay on crypto gains in Botswana?: Nobody can tell you with authority, because the revenue service has not said. BURS has published no guidance mentioning virtual, digital or crypto assets, and neither the 2025 nor the 2026 Budget Speech mentions them. Botswana also replaced its main tax statutes with effect from 1 July 2026. Treat the position as unsettled and take local advice rather than trusting a confident number from a comparison site.