FATF, the Financial Action Task Force, is the intergovernmental body that sets the anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist-financing standards that national regulators then write into their own law. Its virtual-assets work is where the obligations covering virtual asset service providers come from: Recommendation 15 brings virtual assets and VASPs into scope, and Recommendation 16, the Travel Rule, covers the originator and beneficiary information that has to accompany a transfer. FATF does not supervise you directly — your national regulator does, using FATF's standard as the template.
FATF publishes its work on this subject on a dedicated virtual assets topic page. Two of its Recommendations are the ones a crypto business hears about constantly. Recommendation 15 is the one that brings virtual assets and virtual asset service providers inside the AML perimeter. Recommendation 16 is the Travel Rule: the requirement that identifying information about the originator and the beneficiary travels with a transfer.
Neither is law by itself. FATF issues standards and assesses countries against them; the binding text you actually answer to is your own jurisdiction's implementation, which is why the same Recommendation produces different licence conditions in Germany, Turkey and Singapore.
Because the Travel Rule turns a counterparty address into a counterparty institution. Once a transfer has to carry originator and beneficiary details, the question "who is on the other end" stops being optional curiosity and becomes a record you are expected to hold. Screening answers the part of that question the counterparty cannot tell you: what the address has been connected to before it reached you.
The same logic applies below the licensed layer. A P2P trader is not a VASP, but the exchange they settle through is, and it inherits the obligation. That is how a rule written for institutions ends up freezing a retail user's balance. Checking the address before you accept it costs nothing — three free checks a day in the Telegram bot, verdict in seconds.
A check does not tell you whether you are a VASP; it gives you the evidence layer the rules assume you already have. The result names what an address is connected to as a category in plain words, pairs a verdict — CLEAN, LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH, CRITICAL — with a recommendation of Proceed, Caution, Review or Reject, and writes out the decision drivers behind it.
For a regulated desk the export is the point: a signed report that can be forwarded to a bank, a supervisor or a counterparty's compliance team, filed against the transfer it belongs to. Teams run this through the workspace and the API; see the pricing page for plans.
No. FATF sets standards and assesses countries against them. The obligations that bind you come from your own national regulator's implementation of those standards, which is why the detail differs between jurisdictions.
It is the Recommendation that brings virtual assets and virtual asset service providers into the AML and counter-terrorist-financing perimeter, so that VASPs are supervised in the way other financial institutions are.
Recommendation 16. It requires that identifying information about the originator and the beneficiary accompanies a transfer, so the receiving institution knows who sent the value and to whom.
Also available in: · · ·
The obligation sits on the service, not on the individual. In practice it reaches individuals anyway, because the exchange or payment provider at either end has to satisfy it before the transfer completes.
Send any wallet to the Telegram bot and get a verdict in seconds. Three checks a day, free, no signup. Desks that screen every deposit run it on plans from $199/mo.