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On March 26 the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Financial Markets Authority and Department of Internal Affairs directed reporting entities to accept scanned copies of documents instead of originals and to perform electronic verification to avoid face-to-face contacts with customers.

A global study of 216 exchanges found 69% of them do not have complete and transparent KYC procedures. It also found that only 26% had a "high" level of AML procedures.

Chainalysis says It's unrealistic and bad to expect crypto exchanges to send KYC information to recipient platforms with every transaction, in response to a draft FATF recommendation.

Two-thirds of banks are thought to be deploying machine learning in their AML efforts, or are close to doing so. US regulators have given tacit approval to the use of technological innovation to combat AML, giving banks more freedom to experiment

A growth in the liquidity of crypto-assets will boost interest in and feasibility of using the underlying technology for tracking purposes. An effective use of blockchain technology would make it much harder to launder money using crypto than digital fiat currency.

The process of AML/CFT regulatory compliance involves KYC (know your customer) throughout transaction lifecycles. This post runs through the typical KYC process and compares different crypto exchange approaches.

New Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards for regulating crypto firms are expected to be finalized in June. They will likely subject crypto exchanges, wallet providers and others to the "travel rule" followed by correspondent banks.

A group of traders from 35 digital assets firms are proposing to create a shared blacklist for parties who renege on trades and engage in dubious activities.

The U.K. government has drawn up an action plan aimed to combat financial crimes that it says will include "action on cryptoassets." The new Economic Crime Plan from H.M. Treasury and the Home Office is aimed to overhaul the the way economic crime is tackled, building better cooperation between government, law enforcement and the private sector.

The 'travel rule', which is currently applied to wire transfers in the US, would mean exchanges need to swap sensitive customer information when transferring funds - a policy that might not sound the death knell for cryptocurrency, but could introduce significant complications for platforms in jurisdictions that decide to introduce legislation reflecting the new guidance.

As expected, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards released Friday include a controversial requirement that "virtual asset service providers" (VASPs), including crypto exchanges, pass information about their customers to one another when transferring funds between firms.

This paper considers the various requirements for identification in the financial sector and the evolving nature of identity and its evolution from analogue to digitized to digital.The establishment of such utilities for digital or electronic identification requires addressing design questions such as registration methods, data availability and cross-jurisdiction recognitions. Yet, as with any reform, a balance between flow-through efficiency and cyber-security needs to be reached to ensure the objectives of financial inclusion and market integrity are not achieved at the detriment of financial stability.

The Canadian government Amended its Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act. Canadian and foreign crypto platforms must now implement a full AML/CFT compliance program and register with the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada.

On June 21, the Financial Action Task Force will publish a note to clarify how participating nations should oversee virtual assets. The new rules will apply to businesses working with tokens and cryptocurrencies, such as exchanges and custodians and crypto hedge funds.

CipherTrace and Shyft have launched a blockchain-based identity and attestation platform aimed to help crypto firms meet the new FATF "travel rule" while still maintaining user privacy. The firms will build KYC and AML ecosystem in which participating exchanges can securely transfer Proof of Knowledge without disclosing personally identifying information.

Hope lies in tools such as zero-knowledge proofs and in emerging "self-sovereign" identity concepts, as well as in a more open-minded regulatory model for curtailing crime - one that doesn't depend on revealing people's personal identifying information. But these are a ways off; they will require user adoption and; to a still large extent, belief in them by policymakers.

Cryptocurrency companies operating in Germany will need to apply for licenses if they intend to keep working legally in the country next year.

What if governments concede that it's both impossible and unnecessary to formally identify poor people at the on and off-ramps? What if they accepted an AML model that treats the endpoints as unidentified nodes and, drawing on these new analytic tools, actively managed access to networks based on behavior not identity? Here, ongoing research in machine learning and high-performance computing by the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab in collaboration with Elliptic could be a catalyst.

A new partnership between the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), Mashreq Bank and fintech firm Norbloc aims to launch a blockchain-based Know Your Customer (KYC) data-sharing consortium in 2020.

Regulators have made clear that the old way of transacting, where you have pseudonymous transfers-that's not going to scale. Some users may leave compliant exchanges for others that choose not to share personal information, or seek out more decentralized methods of exchange that are harder to police. Such a community will have to remain niche.