Korean FSC Instructs Banks To Treat Crypto As High-Risk Clients

Banks in South Korea received instructions coming from the Financial Services Commission. According to the FSC, banks should treat crypto exchanges as high-risk clients. With this, the exchanges must be subject to stricter measures such as ID verification and transaction monitoring.

The FSC told banks that banks should deny services to customers that do not want to comply with the measures. This includes ID verification procedures and reporting suspicious transactions to the Korea Financial Intelligence Unit (KoFIU) which is the anti-money laundering division of the FSC.

On the other hand, banks are trying to seek a limitation to their responsibilities to crypto management. The Korea Federation of Banks, joined by a number of commercial lenders, are working to set up a rule that would give banks immunity in certain cases. These cases include financial crimes with no premeditation at play.

In a report published in The Korea Times, an industry official noted that,

Banks are essentially forced to take responsibility for issuing real-name accounts.

The official added that it is reasonable that there should be some immunity for undertaking this dangerous and costly task.

Follow us on Twitter, Telegram and Google News