Ripple & other crypto firms respond to FATF’s Travel Rule Requirements

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is expected to update its Recommendation 16 with a seemingly strict Travel Rule during a hearing on Wednesday.

Cryptocurrency firms and companies including Ripple have started to respond to the upcoming change, which is being considered as a move forwards for the industry as it attempts to steer itself away from financial crime.

The Travel Rule is designed to restrict money laundering and terrorist financing by adopting an approach that requires all exchanges and digital asset providers to share customer information in order to create a more transparent ecosystem.

The Travel Rule Information Sharing Alliance (TRISA) is a decentralised company designed to help firms be compliant with the upcoming rules.

The TRISA model enables a global interoperable infrastructure for VASPs (Virtual Asset Providers) to determine which Bitcoin, Ethereum or other cryptocurrencies are associated with which VASPs, and where to send the required customer and beneficiary information.

Yerra, Sr. Director, BSA & Sanctions at Ripple, said: “TRISA’s integration with the newly launched PayID enables regulated virtual currency companies to comply with Travel Rule requirements and to extract the information needed to meet other Financial Crime Compliance requirements such as AML transaction monitoring and sanctions screening.

“For the cryptocurrency industry to progress, solutions need to be open, easy to integrate and compliant with international law. TRISA’s solution stands out in its simplicity and security.”

Hardjono at MIT Connection Science, who is working with TRISA to create the CA whitepaper, added: “By adopting the ISO standard for digital certificates, with Extended Validation (EV) for VASP business information, TRISA ensures that VASPs in the ecosystem can readily comply to the Travel Rule. The use of the certificates protects VASPs and customers and provides the broadest possible interoperability with current and future trust infrastructures.”

There were also responses from the likes of Dave Jevans, Co-Chairman of TRISA and CEO of CipherTrace, who believes that “the proposed directory of VASPs combined with a CA model solves that problem by enabling the interoperability needed for universal Travel Rule compliance”.

For more news, guides and cryptocurrency analysis, click here.