UK Travel Rule goes live: This is what it means

The United Kingdom’s Travel Rule obligations have gone live. Furthermore, the Joint Money Laundering Steering Group (JMLSG) has just published its Travel Rule industry guidance, which will provide firms with greater clarity on how to meet the new obligations.

Elliptic’s Mark Aruliah co-chaired CryptoUK industry working groups on the topic with Catarina Veloso from Notabene, and he personally worked on the guidance with the UK Treasury, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the JMLSG.

In this blog, Mark breaks down what the Travel Rule actually is, and discusses the challenges that UK crypto firms may face from the new obligations.

What do the changes mean?

The obligations will require UK crypto asset firms to send beneficiary and originator information before or when making a digital asset transfer to another crypto company.

As mentioned in previous posts, this mirrors the fiat funds transfer obligations – more commonly referred to as the Travel Rule.

The new obligations will strengthen law enforcement’s ability to identify and take action more readily against bad actors.

As an ex-regulator, I welcome these obligations, but they do come with challenges.

I will continue to co-chair the CryptoUK working group and focus our attention on implementation challenges and provide a feedback loop to the FCA and the UK Treasury.

Unanswered questions

For me, the key challenge is that the UK Travel Rule regulations do not have a de minimis threshold or any other real form of proportionality (excluding transactions related to unhosted wallets, where there is a level of proportionality).

That, in essence, is the crux of the challenge for industry. The lack of clarity in terms of what firms have to do becomes apparent when dealing with transaction types.

For example, what does a UK crypto firm do when it:

• Receives a transaction from a virtual asset service provider (VASP) in a jurisdiction with no Travel Rule obligations and which does not provide the relevant information on its own volition – for instance, some EU firms;
• Interacts with a VASP from a jurisdiction with Travel Rule obligations but where there is a de minimis threshold, and so transactions below that figure would not mandate a legal obligation to send the relevant information – so, for example, the US, which has a $3,000 de minimis threshold; or
• Has difficulty with identifying interoperable Travel Rule solutions to communicate information in a data-secure environment to a third-party VASP?

Also, the lack of proportionality in relation to small monetary value transactions will incur costs to UK industry which may not be proportionate to the money laundering risk.

Given the extent of the industry dialogue, the UK Treasury and FCA will be aware of these challenges.

Nevertheless, it was disappointing that JMLSG did not include some of the recommendations from CryptoUK members that would have addressed a number of these issues.

That said, I very much appreciate the work that JMLSG has done to deliver this guidance in a timely manner to support the UK crypto industry.

I also understand, from my previous time at the FCA, the challenges when agreeing such guidance with a number of stakeholders.

FCA guidance

The FCA did provide additional guidance on the Travel Rule obligations prior to the JMLSG’s aforementioned publication.

This was helpful, as it acknowledges the challenges that the UK crypto industry faces and it does address some of the elements I have raised above.

However, I think that the FCA guidance fell slightly short of providing the full clarity needed by industry, which means there is a risk that well-meaning UK crypto firms – which clearly want to comply fully – could inadvertently fall short of the supervisory expectations.

I am sure that my erstwhile FCA colleagues will come out with additional guidance to support the industry in the coming weeks. After all, the absence of such clarity will make supervision of firms more challenging if there is market confusion of the regulator’s viewpoint.

Furthermore, after working with the industry on this matter, I am confident that most are in dialogue with the FCA – so even if there is no further FCA guidance, there may be individual supervisory dialogue to allay concerns.

Industry preparation on this topic has been good, though firms may need some bedding-in time.

The greater challenge for the UK crypto industry may actually come next month, when the FCA’s financial promotion obligations go live.

Having managed the FCA’s financial promotion policy team for a period, I believe the challenges to the industry will be greater.

As there is a higher risk of investor harm, the FCA is likely to take a more active enforcement role to convey market messages.

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