Group Backed by ING Bank, Fidelity and Standard Chartered Releases Crypto AML Tools

Oct 8, 2020 at 08:00 UTC.The Travel Rule Protocol, a working group favored by banks and traditional financial institutions and focused on bringing crypto in line with global anti-money laundering standards, has released the first version of its API.Announced Thursday, the 25-member TRP working group, which includes Standard Chartered, ING Bank and Fidelity Digital Assets, has published the TRP API version 1.0.0.The product aims to offer a straightforward way for firms to swap identification data about the originators and beneficiaries of crypto transactions, as per the requirements of global AML watchdog the Financial Action Task Force.

The TRP working group is the first to include high street banks among its founding members, however.

"The impetus for the TRP API was a desire by the working group to ensure an easy path to Travel Rule compliance, as well as communications standardization and interoperability for VASPs around the world," Maxime de Guillebon of SC Ventures, Standard Chartered's innovation unit, said in a statement.

The TRP release uses two simple RESTful APIs, designed for querying address ownership and sending required originator and beneficiary information about digital asset transfers.

The IVMS-101 project, which is also a founding member of TRP, came up with a standard data format for the payload of Travel Rule messages.

"The TRP working group and API is about how you allow VASPs to share that [IVMS-101] data," said Madden.

The work the TRP is doing, he said, is not so concerned with the discovery part, and rather concentrates on the process by which firms can compliantly deliver the information payload."The TRP focus doesn't assume large-scale auto-discovery - although I know some groups are working on doing advanced auto-discovery, delivered transparently with nice user experience," said Madden.

"Not everyone is taking the same approach, but some TRP members are just intending to ask the user, before withdrawal goes out, which VASP are you sending it to. Then there's no need for auto-discovery."

It's not surprising the TRP's membership is growing, given the financial clout of its founding team.

Led by ING Bank, Pyctor includes ABN AMRO, BNP Paribas Securities Services, Citi, Invesco, Société Générale, State Street and UBS."We're excited for the future as TRP is scalable in the financial sector while maximizing interoperability with other emerging Travel Rule solutions," Hervé Francois, blockchain initiative lead at ING bank and Pyctor CEO, said in a statement.