If you are dealing in digital assets, odds are you are a money service business (MSB). You should have a plan to address your anti-money laundering (AML) obligations under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA).
Compliance with state and federal law regarding the activities of money services businesses including money transmitters, digital asset exchanges, digital asset wallets, etc is of the utmost importance. Failure to take these obligations seriously can lead to serious financial and potentially criminal liability.
At Kelman PLLC we can help address your compliance issues and set you on the right path. From analyzing your business to determine whether it qualifies as a money services business, to assisting with registration, we have the experience and know how to assist your firm at every stage of the process.
We can help you with:
Designing policies to comply with the BSA and local regulations
Registering for money transmission licenses in various jurisdictions
Assessing your compliance risks
Advising on KYC policies or large transactions
We have designed AML programs for entrepreneurs so they can minimize their compliance risk and continue doing what they do best: innovate.
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Frequently asked questions:
Anti-Money Laundering, or AML, are rules designed to prevent money laundering and deputize business allowing people to transfer money, like banks or certain cryptocurrency businesses. AML rules require businesses to engage in “Know Your Customer” (KYC) techniques that allow them to detect who their users are, to record and detect suspicious activity on the platform, and to limit certain high-risk actions such as large volume transactions by untrusted parties. Although these laws are ever-changing, and in many cases have not caught up to cryptocurrency businesses, we have worked in Asia, Europe, the United States, and the Caribbean to not only design compliance programs, but to craft new policy for governments looking to understand how to apply AML to this emerging space.
Many times, the best approach for a startup is to establish their proof of concept and then navigate compliance needs at a later date. However, sometimes successful startups will look back and realize they started on the wrong foot, and wish they could start over. We are happy to consult with you for free and help determine where your business stands. If we don’t think there is a high risk in your beginning phases, we will let you know.
Compliance programs are risk-based. That is, they can and should be tailored to your specific firm size and industry category. The regulators do not expect you to have a commercial bank size compliance program.
We’ve never met a client for whom it was too late to do this. Sometimes it requires some creativity, which is one of our firm’s greatest strengths.
Depending on your business model and nationality, we will design the customized compliance program that will either bring you under an existing regulatory framework, or allow you to ‘self-regulate’ in anticipation of one. Our goal is to ensure you can fulfill your business needs and goals while protecting yourself from the very serious regulatory and compliance risks that lurk in the crypto space.