9th July 2024
The FIAU would like to inform interested parties, and especially those subject persons involved in the transfer of funds and of crypto-assets, that the European Banking Authority (EBA) has released new Guidelines on the so-called ‘travel rule’. These Guidelines explain into further detail how certain provisions of the recast of the Transfer of Funds Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2023/1113) requiring information to accompany transfers of funds and certain crypto-assets are to be complied with.
The Guidelines outline the necessary information that must accompany a transfer of funds or crypto assets and detail the steps that payment service providers (PSPs), intermediary PSPs (IPSPs), crypto-asset service providers (CASPs), and intermediary CASPs (ICASPs) should take to identify missing or incomplete information. They also specify how the said information is to be transmitted, the characteristics of the systems to be used to transmit said information and the actions to be taken if a transfer of funds or crypto-assets is missing the required information.
The aim is to create a uniform and effective method for applying the travel rule across the EU, enabling relevant authorities to fully trace these transfers when needed to prevent, detect, or investigate money laundering and terrorist financing.
These guidelines will therefore replace the current Joint Guidelines under Article 25 of Regulation (EU) 2015/847 on the measures payment service providers should take to detect missing or incomplete information on the payer or the payee, and the procedures they should put in place to manage a transfer of funds lacking the required information (JC/GL/2017/16) as of 30 December 2024.
The FIAU is set to adopt these guidelines as its own through the revision of existing documents, including the Implementing Procedures – Part II for the VFA Sector. Pending the completion of the said revision exercise, anyone interested can consult the guidelines either by accessing the same through the FIAU’s website by clicking here or through the EBA’s website by clicking here.