# The Travel Rule

By [WiseBoa](https://paragraph.com/@wiseboa) · 2022-05-10

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In March 2021, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has put out its updated “Guidance on the risk-based approach to virtual assets (VAs) and virtual asset service providers (VASPs)” for public comment. The FATF originally published this Guidance in June 2019 when the FATF finalised changes to its Standards to clearly place anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) obligations on VAs and VASPs. In July 2020, the FATF committed to update this Guidance as set out in its 12-month review report and report to G20 on so-called stablecoins.

The March proposal was updated to provide the public and private sectors with revised guidance. These revisions focused on six key areas where greater guidance from the FATF was sought. These are to

On May 10, 2021, Tokyo FinTech held a webinar to discuss this revised guidance in the context of the overall regulatory environment, with a specific focus on the travel rule. We have posted Lucas Betschart’s explanation of the travel rule and its impact on the VASP ecosystem in Switzerland on the Tokyo FinTech YouTube channel.

While we will use the Japan Financial Services Agency (FSA) announcement to expect compliance with the Travel Rule by April 2022 as a hook, the geographic coverage of the panelists will allow us to take the discussion into a global context. The regulation to be adopted requires all virtual asset service providers to share transaction data of senders and recipients of crypto-assets.

The FSA also noted that it had requested the Japan Virtual and Crypto Assets Exchange Association (JVCEA) to advise its members to prepare for the implementation of the rule. FATF created the travel rules to prevent cryptocurrencies from being used to finance terrorist and money laundering activities. Japan authorities have been concerned about the use of cryptocurrencies to perpetrate financial crimes within the country.

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*Originally published on [WiseBoa](https://paragraph.com/@wiseboa/the-travel-rule)*