What digital asset compliance covers
- Authorisation: the licence or registration for each service and market
- Customer due diligence: KYC and KYB at onboarding and over time
- Transaction monitoring: KYT and wallet screening on deposits and withdrawals
- Sanctions: screening customers, counterparties and addresses
- Travel Rule: sending and receiving data on originator and beneficiary
- Client assets: custody, segregation and reconciliation
Trading venues add market surveillance. In the EU, Article 92 of MiCA requires any person professionally arranging or executing transactions in crypto-assets to have arrangements, systems and procedures to prevent and detect market abuse, and to report any reasonable suspicion to the authority without delay.
How it differs from compliance in traditional finance
The duties are familiar and the data is new. A blockchain is public, so a firm can trace funds beyond its own customer. Transfers are final within minutes, so checks run before funds are credited or released, not afterwards.
Customers can also hold their own keys, which adds a counterparty that banking has no equivalent of: the self-hosted wallet.
Who needs digital asset compliance
Any firm that exchanges, transfers or holds crypto-assets for customers needs it, including a fintech that embeds another firm's licensed service: the partner asks for evidence of controls before launch. Regulators assess the compliance function when a firm applies, so the policies, the tooling and an experienced officer come before the first customer.
Where Digital asset compliance shows up in a platform
Modules that do the work
- Compliance reportingTransaction monitoring, the Travel Rule and regulatory reports, ready for your regulator.
- KYC / AMLIdentity checks, screening and ongoing monitoring, with the verification provider you choose.
- Fraud & riskReal-time fraud scoring, limits and case management, with the risk engines you already trust.
- Custody & walletsWallets on every major chain, with MPC custody from leading providers or your own keys.
Platforms that need it
Guides that go deeper
- MiCA checklist: launching a crypto exchange in the EUWhat the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation asks of an exchange: authorisation, capital, governance, client assets, the trading platform rules, and the laws that sit beside it.
- FCA cryptoasset registration: what UK crypto firms needWhat FCA registration under the Money Laundering Regulations asks of a UK crypto business, how crypto promotions are controlled, and what changes on 25 October 2027.
- VARA, ADGM or DIFC: where to license a crypto business in the UAEWho licenses crypto in the UAE: VARA in Dubai, the DFSA in DIFC, the FSRA in ADGM, the Capital Market Authority elsewhere, and the Central Bank when tokens are used to pay.
Where it is written
The laws and standards this page's facts come from.
General information, not legal advice: what applies to you depends on your services and your market.