European Bank Authority published its Opinion about the European Commission’s proposal regarding Virtual Currencies.
The EBA welcomes the proposal, but highligths some issues that appears ambiguous, and mainly:
- Transposition of the deadline (01.01.2017 is too early to implement rules and let actors to comply).
- Virtual currency transactions should remain outside of the scope of PSD2.
- The status of the Exchangers and Custodian Wallet Providers should be clarified.
- Authorities should be enabled to obtain information, also about beneficial owner of Exchangers and Wallet Providers.
- The management and controllers will fit a proper test
- Sanctions should remain.
The opinion seems to go in the opposite direction of European Parliament, considering Virtual Currencies as a medium for money laundering and financing terrorism in absence of any evidences.
The amendments requested go beyond the scope of extension of AML to virtual currencies.
