The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has assessed the white-edge freshwater whipray as Endangered, as it is under heavy pressure from fishing and habitat loss, degradation, and fragmentation.

The white-edge freshwater whipray was described by Leonard Compagno and Tyson Roberts in a 1982 issue of Environmental Biology of Fishes, with the specific epithet signifer (Latin for "sign-bearing") in reference to its distinctive coloration.

The type specimen is an immature female 29 cm (11 in) across, collected from the mouth of the Sungai Ketungau off the Kapuas River in West Kalimantan, Indonesia.

[4] A 1999 phylogenetic analysis, based on cytochrome b sequences, found that it is closely related to Maculabatis gerrardi and Brevitrygon imbricata, which form a sister species pair.

[1] Although these rivers are now isolated from one another, when sea levels were low during the Pleistocene epoch (2.6 million to 12,000 years ago) they may have all been contiguous as part of the Central or North Sundaland drainage basin.

Reproduction is aplacental viviparous with the developing embryos sustained by maternally produced histotroph ("uterine milk"), as is the case in other stingrays.

[1][11] Habitat loss and degradation as a result of pollution, logging and dam construction are likely to pose an even a greater threat to the survival of this species.

In Thailand, dams built on the Chao Phraya have fragmented the resident stingray population and effectively reduced its genetic diversity.

[7] Because of diverse threats faced by this ray and the lack of exchange between the different rivers it inhabits, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has assessed the white-edge freshwater whipray as Endangered.