Know Your Customer

The recent rise in fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion cases has led financial institutions to focus on how they can apply underlying controls on their counterparts. Regulators worldwide have developed an interest in the frenzy and are continuously developing regulatory moves targeting market actors.  The aim is to ensure financial institutions align with the current security practices and measures like Know Your Customer (KYC). Several exchanges have employed their compliance to meet measures that have been set while others…

The top peer-to-peer (P2P) crypto exchange LocalBitcoins has noted a 70 percent decrease in the number of transactions related to darknet since its adoption of AML (Anti-Money Laundering) and KYC (Know Your Customer) regulations in September last year. LocalBitcoins noted its ability to remarkably decrease the number of transactions related to darknet carried out using its platform between September last year and May this year. In the words of the chief marketing officer at LocalBitcoins, Jukka Blomberg to Cointelegraph, the…

On January 10th, 2020, the European Union’s 5th Anti-Money laundering Directory (5AMLD) came into force. The new law gives sweeping powers to compliance organizations and law authorities to introduce a series of restrictive demands on crypto companies in a way never seen before. Organizations that deal with crypto-related activity have been under mounting pressure to implement compliance measures to register new clients. With the advent of the law, the compliance measures will only increase on an industry-wide scale, with regulations…

KYC and AML checks have been an integral part of financial institutions for a while now. As required by several financial regulators across the world, these mandatory checks have helped curb identity fraud cases and other financial crimes. KYC and AML checks have targeted the traditional financial industry. However, with the introduction and growth of the crypto industry, issues arose on whether to include these checks. The main point of concern was that cryptocurrencies were unregulated. Today, however, several exchanges…

Know Your Customer (aka KYC) is the regulatory and compliance obligation for the conventional banking and financial system to capture customer information before onboarding and providing any financial services. In banks, KYC is embedded into the account opening forms, which mandate customers to provide accurate information and ideally update as soon as any change occurs in the KYC data. Similarly, other financial institutions, such as Stocks, Mutual Funds, Insurance companies, etc., also require KYC information from their prospective customers. Primarily…