AUSTRAC Removes 45 Payments & Crypto Businesses in High-Risk Sector Sweep

Key Takeaways

• 45 Businesses Removed: AUSTRAC cancelled, suspended or refused to renew registrations for 45 remittance and virtual asset service providers over the past year.
• High-Risk Sectors Under Scrutiny: The regulator is intensifying oversight of payments, remittances and virtual assets because of heightened money-laundering and terrorism-financing risks.
• GetCoins Registration Cancelled: AUSTRAC said the VASP was allegedly exploited by organized cryptocurrency investment scams and worked with the National Anti-Scam Centre to disrupt the activity.
• Enforcement Is Widening: The removals follow an investigation into Western Union and action to suspend Cryptolink’s crypto ATM network.
• Registration Is Not Guaranteed: AUSTRAC warned that businesses failing to manage risks or meet reporting obligations may lose their ability to operate.

Deep Dive

Australia’s financial intelligence regulator has removed 45 remittance and virtual asset businesses from its registers over the past year, an unusually broad sweep through parts of the financial system where money can move quickly, cross borders easily and, when controls fail, become difficult to follow.

AUSTRAC said Monday that it had cancelled, suspended or refused to renew the registrations of 45 remittance and virtual asset service providers, or VASPs. Some were dormant. Others were insolvent, had stopped providing designated services for extended periods or lacked the operational capacity to begin or continue trading. There were businesses that had failed to hold the appropriate registration or notify AUSTRAC of material changes. And then there were those the regulator determined presented significant money-laundering or terrorism-financing risks.

The circumstances varied, but AUSTRAC’s answer was the same: these businesses no longer belonged on its registers.

“The rapid movement of money across borders can create some of the highest ML/TF risks,” AUSTRAC Chief Executive Brendan Thomas said.

For businesses whose registrations were cancelled, removal is more than a reprimand. They can no longer operate under that registration, and AUSTRAC said that, where appropriate, it had referred individuals behind the businesses to law-enforcement agencies and regulatory partners in Australia and overseas.

The referrals are an important part of what AUSTRAC is doing here. Payments and virtual assets are peculiarly indifferent to national boundaries. A weak operator in one jurisdiction can become part of a chain that reaches through several others, which means supervision tends to be only as useful as the cooperation behind it.

“Financial crime operates across borders, and we work closely with our domestic and international partners to strengthen the financial system not just in Australia, but globally,” Thomas said.

One of the 45 cases shows what that can look like away from the language of registration regimes.

AUSTRAC worked with Australia’s National Anti-Scam Centre after customer complaints involving BA Digital Ventures Pty Ltd, which traded as GetCoins. The regulator requested information about the company’s operations to assess its ability to manage money-laundering risks. According to AUSTRAC, the VASP was allegedly exploited by organized cryptocurrency investment scams.

AUSTRAC cancelled GetCoins’ registration and said its work with the National Anti-Scam Centre helped disrupt organized investment-scam activity.

There is a useful distinction in that sequence. AUSTRAC did not accuse the company itself of organizing the scams. Its account was that the business had allegedly been exploited by them. For a regulator concerned with financial crime, however, vulnerability can itself become a supervisory problem when a business entrusted with moving money cannot adequately manage the risks attached to that role.

“This VASP was allegedly exploited by organised cryptocurrency investment scams,” Thomas said. “By working with NASC and cancelling GetCoin’s registration AUSTRAC helped to disrupt organised investment scam activity.”

The 45 removals also sit alongside a series of more visible interventions by AUSTRAC in the payments, remittance and virtual asset sectors. In recent months, the regulator has opened an investigation into Western Union and taken action to suspend Cryptolink’s crypto ATM network. AUSTRAC says the activity reflects increased scrutiny of sectors it has identified as carrying heightened risks of money laundering, terrorism financing and other serious crime.

Taken together, the actions suggest a regulator paying closer attention not simply to misconduct after it occurs, but to whether businesses should remain inside the regulated market at all. Registration can look bureaucratic from a distance. Here, AUSTRAC is treating it as a continuing judgment about fitness to operate.

That matters particularly in industries built around speed. The same qualities that make remittance services and virtual assets useful (money moving rapidly, sometimes internationally, through systems designed to reduce friction) can make deficiencies in controls more consequential. A business does not need to be the author of a financial crime to become useful to the people committing it.

AUSTRAC has made clear that the recent removals are not the end of the exercise. Thomas said the regulator’s increased oversight reflects its priorities and its response to the agency’s annual risk update, with businesses that fail to meet the expectations of the registration regime facing the possibility of removal.

“We are proactively identifying and removing businesses that do not meet the expectation set by the registration regime and we will continue to remove businesses that pose a significant money laundering or terrorism financing risk,” he said.

The final warning was directed at the businesses still on the registers, and it left little room for interpreting registration as something secured once and then forgotten.

“Understand and manage your risks and meet your reporting obligations,” Thomas said, “or you may not be able to continue operating.”

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