Swiss Regulator Licenses Two Blockchain Firms To Support AML Project

FINMA, the Swiss financial authority, offered their support for anti-money laundering (AML) requirements for blockchain-focused companies earlier this week. It also granted licenses for broker-dealer transactions to two new blockchain firms.

FINMA believes that AML is “technology-neutral”, and expects all payments and blockchain transactions to follow their requirements. The regulators said that the gist is simple:

“Institutions supervised by FINMA are only permitted to send cryptocurrencies or other tokens to external wallets belonging to their own customers whose identity has already been verified and are only allowed to receive cryptocurrencies or tokens from such customers.”

FINMA manages the financial system of Switzerland, including banking and security deals and also Libra, Facebook’s cryptocurrency project. Earlier this week, a report suggested that FINMA officials have purportedly met with the U.S. Congressional Representatives to discuss Libra.

“FINMA-supervised institutions are thus not permitted to receive tokens from customers of other institutions or to send tokens to such customers,” they wrote.

Furthermore, FINMA does not allow exchanging of tokens from unregulated wallets and requires all parties to have AML information to do so.

Additionally, FINMA has issued its first “blockchain and securities licenses” to Sygnum AG and SEBA Crypto AG, the two new blockchain-focused companies. They are also the first companies to be registered as broker-dealers with the primary focus on blockchain in Switzerland. These two companies will need to follow the new rules of AML.