In recent years, the financial industry has seen fast-growing adoption of financial technology, or FinTech. “FinTech” refers to technology enabled provision of financial services, including by alternative providers who use technology-based systems in some way to either provide financial services directly or to make the financial system more efficient.
In terms of the fundamentals of anti-money laundering - customer due diligence, knowing the source and destination of money flows and identifying suspicious activity - technological innovations provide an opportunity to bring anti-money laundering into the 21st century.
New technologies - supported by advances in encryption and network computing - are driving transformational change in the global economy, including in how goods, services and assets are exchanged. An important development in this process has been the emergence of virtual currencies. Virtual currencies and especially their underlying technologies (notably distributed ledgers based on blockchains) are a potentially important advance for the financial sector that could increase efficiency and financial inclusion, but can also serve as vehicles for money laundering, terrorism financing and tax evasion...
