Cashaa, a London-based crypto banking startup has launched its “Crypto Business/Broker” account to ensure crypto businesses/brokers are compliant with the FCA’s new rules for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist finance and Fifth Money Laundering Directive (5AMLD).
The firm addresses the difficulties of crypto businesses to get access to banking. There is no monthly fee to make sure small innovative crypto companies can use the product, but there will be an application fee of 100,000 CAS, which can be acquired from Binance DEX. The KYC checks and ongoing transaction monitoring will be done automatically in the account, to make sure each transaction is following the European 5AMLD.
Archit Aggarwal, Chief Product Officer at Cashaa, said: “We launched our business banking services in 2019, but onboarding crypto businesses was a huge challenge, mostly due to changing compliance rules, sometimes unclear KYC and AML policies of the business or sometimes just loose behavior of founders. The Fifth Money Laundering Directive (5AMLD) became compulsory for European state from 10th Jan 2020, resulting in FCA to become the AML and CTF supervisor for crypto businesses. Based on my experience, the situation will get worse for many crypto companies out there who do not understand the implications. Our product is developed to adopt these new laws with reliable banking services to protect crypto entrepreneurs.”.
While more than 1000 crypto companies have applied to Cashaa, mostly looking for a bank account and credit/debit card processing facility, the startup turned down 80% of the applications because the businesses did not understand AML and CFT rules. This has made Cashaa realize that most founders within the blockchain ecosystem are innovators with a focus on engineering, but are lacking specialized compliance knowledge.
Cashaa’s “Crypto Business/Broker” account aims to address those shortcomings with coded policies and systems that mitigate the risk of the business being used for money laundering or terrorist financing. Three levels of the KYC system will do intrusive due diligence, known as enhanced due diligence when dealing with customers who may present a higher money laundering/terrorist finance risk, also including PEP (Politically Exposed Person) checks.
Kumar Gaurav, Chief Executive Officer at Cashaa, said: “We have put our experience of dealing with hundreds of crypto businesses and extended our capabilities through technology to our customers to give them the freedom to innovate with minimum worrying about the new FCA rules or 5AMLD.”
The crypto broker account for Pound sterling (GBP) and Euro (EUR) will be available from now on. Great Britain and Lithuania IBAN (International Bank Account Number) accounts with a unique reference number will enable FPS (Faster Payments Service), CHAPS (Clearing House Automated Payment System), SEPA (Single Euro Payments Area) and SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) payments, allowing 3rd party payments up to 200 Million GBP.
