A VASP — virtual asset service provider — is a business that, for or on behalf of another person, exchanges, transfers, safekeeps or administers virtual assets, or provides financial services related to their issuance. The term comes from the FATF standards and is the hook that attaches AML obligations to a crypto business: registration or licensing, customer due diligence, transaction monitoring, sanctions screening and the Travel Rule. In EU law the licensed equivalent is the CASP.
Whether your counterparty is a VASP changes what you can rely on. A licensed provider holds identity records on the person behind a transfer, applies its own screening, and can be asked questions through a formal channel. A self-custody wallet holds none of that, and the address is the whole of your evidence.
It matters in the other direction too. If your own business meets the definition in your jurisdiction, the obligations follow whether or not you have registered — and "we did not think we were one" is not a defence anyone has enjoyed making.
Where the counterparty address is attributed, the result names the venue and states its category: exchange, no-KYC exchange, instant swap service, payment processor, gambling venue, market. That category is the practical answer to "what kind of provider am I dealing with", and it is the part your policy can be written against.
For a single address the Telegram bot returns it free, three checks a day, in seconds. In the workspace the category is a queue filter and a line in the signed report you hand a bank that wants to know who your counterparties are.
| Business | Usually a VASP? |
|---|---|
| Custodial exchange | Yes |
| Custodial wallet provider | Yes |
| OTC desk trading for clients | Yes |
| Crypto payment processor | Yes |
| Self-custody wallet software that never controls keys | Generally no |
| A person trading their own funds P2P | Generally no — though venues still screen them |
| Miner or validator | Generally no |
Classification is decided by your national regulator against your actual activity, not by a table.
Trading your own funds is generally outside the definition, but trading as a business for other people is treated as a provider in several jurisdictions. Either way the venues you deal with will screen your addresses.
The same idea in two rulebooks. VASP is the FATF term used globally; CASP is the licensed category in EU law. Which one applies to you depends on where you operate.
Sanctions screening and risk-based transaction monitoring are standard obligations for supervised firms, and in crypto both run against addresses as well as names.
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Registers are national. Licensing may sit with a financial or securities regulator, while reporting runs to the financial intelligence unit — MASAK in Turkey ([MASAK](https://masak.hmb.gov.tr/)), SEPBLAC in Spain ([SEPBLAC](https://www.sepblac.es/en/)).
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.