A project from Colombia’s Financial Superintendence aims to clarify how future interactions between banks and virtual asset service providers (VASPs) will be managed. Before accepting virtual asset service providers as clients, banks must first confirm a number of preconditions, which are defined in the document.
Latam nations, where cryptocurrency adoption is rising quickly, are increasingly focused on regulation. The Financial Superintendence of Colombia has just released a document that aims to set standards for what cryptocurrency exchanges and custody providers need to comply with in order to be treated as customers by banks. Key terms like virtual asset service providers (VASPs) and virtual assets covered by the regulation are defined in the project.
Additionally, it stipulates that companies that offer virtual asset services must be linked to Colombia’s financial intelligence office, UIAF, and have a strategy in place to deal with any potential attempts at money laundering and terrorism financing made using their platform.
The project also makes an indirect reference to compliance with the travel rule promoted by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). It states banks must verify these VASPs have:
The technological and operational capacity to monitor transactions with virtual assets, as well as to obtain, preserve and transmit the information of the originator and the beneficiary of each transaction.
More Requirements
The proposal establishes that the VASPs will have to be able to present clear information to their customers about the services they offer and the risks associated with these services, the costs associated with these services, and the virtual assets present on their platforms.
VASPs will also have a plan to deal with operational and cybersecurity-related risks to handle possible hacks or platform problems that might affect how their services are delivered to their customers. Also, banks will have the obligation to separate their responsibilities from those of VASPs, telling customers that only they and these platforms are responsible for VASP-related problems.
The proposal also establishes restrictions regarding investments. It states:
The supervised entities authorized to capture resources through deposit products or funds must ensure that the operations of deposit and withdrawal of resources in financial products of deposit or funds in the name of a VASP are carried out only through non-face-to-face channels.
The proposal is still in the discussion stages, and the Financial Superintendence will receive suggestions about it until August 12.
