Ensuring stringent customer due diligence when onboarding new customers in the crypto space

Payhound is a company that offers various crypto-related services to its clients. The company is licensed in an EU jurisdiction as a Virtual Financial Assets Service Provider, making it one of the first regulated entities in this space.

Payhound offers processing solutions designed to easily convert crypto payments to traditional fiat currencies. These services are particularly attractive to companies in the online Gaming Industry, Financial and Investment Services which have high volume and high processing requirements. Payhound also offers an online platform for the trading of crypto.

Conscious of the risk that crypto can be used for the purposes of laundering funds associated with criminal activity or possibly terrorism financing, the company endeavours to comply with the applicable statutory and regulatory obligations through stringent customer due diligence procedures when onboarding new customers as well as to determine when client risk assessments require updating. It was for these reasons that the InScope-AML team was approached.

The company’s MLRO explains.

“We initially approached InScope-AML as we needed a tool that could help us automate Customer Risk Assessments as well as the ongoing monitoring of our customers. It was also important that the solution had to be aligned to international regulations, and also take local regulatory requirements into consideration.

The migration process was very smooth and we quickly took advantage of the solution’s other features.

We make constant use of Client Overview Dashboards which provide key client information at a glance. The solution keeps us abreast of sanctions, adverse media and political exposure of our new and existing customers and keeps track of document expiry dates. InScope-AML also alerts us when risk assessments are due and when additional information needs to be collected.

We also find the reporting functionality particularly important, especially to assist in the compilation of information required by the regulator.”