Does this apply to me?
Only if you’re verified in South Africa, Malaysia, Indonesia, or the United Kingdom. In future, it will apply to Nigeria as well.
The reason we ask you these questions when you’re sending crypto is due to Luno’s regulatory obligations with the Travel Rule.
What is the Travel Rule?
The Travel Rule is a set of guidelines designed to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. It requires financial institutions to record information about the sender and receiver of a transaction.
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an inter-governmental organisation which mandates the Travel Rule, has expanded their guidelines to encompass virtual assets like cryptocurrencies. That’s why Luno and other compliant crypto platforms will ask you for details about the person or business you’re transacting with.
Tip
If you’d like to find out more about the Travel Rule, we’ve answered the most frequently asked questions here.
What information is required?
Requirements may differ slightly depending on how each country implements the Travel Rule in its local regulations. In general, we’ll ask:
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Whether the address belongs to you or belongs to someone else.
- If it belongs to someone else, you’ll need to provide a few details about the sender or recipient.
- Those details will vary depending on whether they are an individual or a legal entity (such as a business).
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Whether the sender’s or recipient’s address is hosted on another exchange or wallet or if it’s a private address.
- Private addresses refer to non-custodial wallets where the user holds the private key (some examples: MetaMask, Ledger or Trezor).
- If you’re sending to another crypto exchange or exchange, you’ll select the platform from a list if we can’t automatically detect where the address is hosted.
When completing this information, please make sure that you’re getting accurate information directly from the recipient.
Note
You’ll only need to provide this information once for each new address you send to or receive from.
Which platforms can I send to?
In order to comply with the Travel Rule, Luno will only facilitate sends to approved crypto exchanges (also known as Virtual or Crypto Asset Service Providers – VASPs or CASPs for short).
Tip
When sending crypto to another exchange, you’ll search or select from an extensive list of approved platforms you can send to. We also try to maintain up-to-date lists in our Help Centre:
Final thoughts
Luno is committed to maintaining the highest standards of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Counter-Terrorist Financing (CTF) compliance.
Where Travel Rule compliance is required by law in any of our supported countries, we need to get the information from you so that we can continue being a trusted place for you to store and transact with cryptocurrencies.