Travel Rule

The requirement for originator and beneficiary information to be collected, transmitted and retained by service providers involved in a virtual-asset transfer. Under the FATF Standards, Recommendation 16 is applied to virtual assets through Recommendation 15 and its Interpretive Note (INR.15). In the EU, Regulation (EU) 2023/1113, applicable since 30 December 2024, requires the relevant information for transfers within its scope regardless of amount. For transfers involving self-hosted addresses, CASPs must collect and retain the required information; for transfers exceeding EUR 1,000, they must also take adequate measures to assess whether the address is owned or controlled by their customer.

The information is exchanged between service providers through off-chain messaging systems, not recorded directly on the blockchain. It can provide investigators with information about the parties to a transfer, but its reliability depends on how the data was obtained and verified: the originating provider verifies information about its own customer, while information about the beneficiary is generally supplied by the originator and checked against the receiving provider's customer records. Transfers involving jurisdictions that have not implemented the Travel Rule, or have implemented it incompletely, may lack the expected information.