Crypto.com is a Visa Program Manager and they issue MCO Visa Cards to customers around the world by partnering with local card issuers — such as collaborating with Metropolitan Commercial Bank in the United States to make cards available to its customers. The business claims to have over 1 million users — of whom not all are cardholders —, and with cards being available to users in Singapore and across the United States, the firm’s eyes are now set on Europe.

“Our vision is ‘cryptocurrency in every wallet’ and to achieve that we started with a financial product the average consumer is most familiar with; the Visa card,” Kris Marszalek, Cofounder and CEO of Crypto.com, tells Business Malta. “The card is linked to a wallet where you can not only buy, exchange, sell or track cryptocurrencies, but you can also satisfy all your banking needs with products that cover savings, investments, and loans. Users can easily convert their crypto to fiat within the wallet and spend it through the MCO Visa Card anywhere Visa is accepted,” the cofounder CEO adds.

The crafted metal card sports no periodical or delivery fee at the time of the publication of the present article. The service offers up to 5% cashback on all spending — local or overseas — up to 100% purchase reimbursement for Spotify and Netflix, and up to 10% purchase rebate on Airbnb and Expedia, according to the company.

Furthermore, the business says that holders of their Visa cards are entitled to free and unlimited airport lounge access, to free ATM monthly withdrawal up to US$1,000 and can earn up to 8% per annum on their crypto investments.

“With this bridge between the fiat and crypto worlds, crypto will finally be able to make an actual impact for everyday consumers in the real world.”

“All in all, we see ourselves as a ‘crypto super app’ that has every aspect relating to crypto covered, at the same time making it easy and not intimidating to people who are new to crypto. Every product we build is designed to accelerate the world’s transition to cryptocurrency. With this bridge between the fiat and crypto worlds, crypto will finally be able to make an actual impact for everyday consumers in the real world,” adds Mr Marszalek.

Crypto with KYC

Crypto.com says it is committed to compliance, and as such, they follow know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) guidelines; highly unlikely practices for a vertical that initially used to be stigmatised for its anonymity, as well as for shadow economy having been among the early adopters of Bitcoin — the very first cryptocurrency. Users of Crypto.com services, however, are required to identify themselves upon registration, and they are verified before gaining access to their accounts.

“As a fintech company, we enter markets in a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction process, which means that we must have a deep level of understanding of compliance with each jurisdiction’s local rules and regulations,” the cofounder CEO says.

The company has ISO27001:2013, PCI:DSS 3.2.1, Level 1 and CCSS certifications. As the Mr Marszalek says, the company takes the highest measures to ensure that customers are exposed to top-notch data security and privacy standards. At the end of the day, the company’s services are trusted with the very finances of users.

“We do understand that privacy is of utmost importance to users, which is why Crypto.com is fully General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliant, and that our KYC and AML processes have been reviewed by a Big Four* firm to ensure we comply with local rules and regulations. We only retain personal data for as long as necessary, and users also have the option to request us to delete all their data if desired,” Mr Marszalek says.

Pivotal Malta

The company has an office in Malta and are currently in the process of being licensed here. “We are looking to expand our team here next year to focus on compliance and security efforts, as we are gearing up for expansion to Europe. This will be an area that can be spearheaded out of Malta,” Mr Marszelek tells BM.

Malta — that internationally markets itself as the “blockchain island” — is widely considered to have a well-established and thriving technology ecosystem. Having passed blockchain and distributed ledger technologies legislation roughly a year ago, Malta is often seen as a key player in the development of crypto and DLT solutions in the European Union, as well as globally.

“The cryptocurrency industry is going to be tightly regulated in the near future, so there’s plenty of opportunities in compliance and regulatory roles in this space. There is also a tremendous demand for cybersecurity professionals. Crypto.com is committed to working with local institutions to drive education efforts to help nurture local talent and allow it to thrive in the blockchain space,” the cofounder CEO says.

“We believe in giving people the ability to regain control of their money, data and identity via the power of blockchain technology. In order to help mass consumers gain access to crypto, we work hard to ensure our products are fully compliant in each market, which is where the KYC and AML processes come in,” Mr Marszalek underscores.

*EDITORIAL NOTE: On the query of Business Malta, Crypto.com did not disclose whether it is was Deloitte, EY, KPMG or PwC that reviewed its KYC and AML processes as the official public announcement has not yet taken place.

The post Crypto.com marries Visa card with crypto wallet, eyes Malta expansion first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

The webinar will follow up on the theme of the first session and will elaborate on machine learning specifically focusing on anti-money laundering (AML).

Mr Vella is a lecturer within the Department of Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the University of Malta, mainly responsible for the MSc AI-fintech stream. His main areas revolve primarily around AI, machine learning and computational finance.

The members of the bitpod’s founding are George Mangion, Senior Partner at PKF Malta and Marilyn Formosa, Head of Legal at the firm.

“These webinars are an offshoot of our home-grown bitpod concept, launched earlier this year, which is a quasi-lab that contributes to the Maltese startup ecosystem by offering a readily available space to startups, and holding informal meet-up sessions for industry, startups and investors,” said Ms Formosa. 

“We have received great feedback on our first six sessions as well as several suggestions on topics to cover in our future bitpod webinars. Our last session in July was the first featuring a Malta-based crypto operator where we welcomed Adrian Kreter, co-founder of Instacoins, a Bitcoin brokerage firm that is minded to apply for a license under the new VFA Act,” Ms Formosa added.

The post PKF Malta to hold 7th bitpod webinar session first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

“Selecting the best AML solution plays a huge part in eliminating risks and protecting your business from being associated with illegal financial activity,” according to the Computime Software.

Using artificial intelligence (AI), AML software works to identify what deviates from the norm as defined by the programmed rules. As such, Computime software urges that the rules must be set up well, in order to filter out suspicious transactions.

Furthermore, the company says that if there are too few or too many alerts of possible suspicious activity based on the number of transactions, it might be a sign that the transaction monitoring system does not work as intended. Therefore, testing and tweaking the software is needed.

Nevertheless, Computime software notes that using the right technology solutions is useless on its own; the hiring of compliance officers with previous investigative and forensic accounting training, along with knowledge of the business line is crucial. It also must be accompanied by proper training to help them what to look for and how to correctly handle generated alerts.

“It is also vital to have a solid controls process, which involves superiors analysing and verifying the results of AML alerts,” the company’s blog entry underscores.

The post Computime Software sees gravity of AML monitoring first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

The mother company says it identified failures relating to requirements around key event notifications. Betit will pay £1.4m (€1.6m) and MT SecureTrade £700,000 (€800,000+) to responsible gambling charities pursuant to negotiated regulatory settlements, the press release says. The assessments were carried out in 2017 and 2018.

“Each company acknowledged previous weaknesses in its controls to meet social responsibility requirements early in the Gambling Commission process and immediately took steps to address the gaps in its procedures,” said Robin Reed, CEO of GiG. The CEO also praised the transparency of the process and cooperation with the UK watchdog.

“Commencing from the end of 2017, GiG has embarked on an ambitious journey to place player well-being, prevention of money laundering and sustainable business practices at the core of its operators,” Mr Reed added.

“In the last two years, we have invested heavily in automated technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) enabling early prevention, monitoring and other reporting tools. We have also invested in people, building our compliance and player safety teams and ensuring that the necessary tools are available to them to assist in their duties of reducing the risk of business being used to further financial crime and detecting and interacting with players who may be vulnerable or at risk of problem gambling,” Mr Reed said.

The CEO ensured commitment to forming a “safe environment” for players and to “reduce gambling-related harm”. GiG says it envisages an iGaming market that is “fair and fun for all”.

Gaming Innovation Group Inc has operations in Malta and is dual-listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol GIG and on Nasdaq Stockholm under the ticker symbol GIGSEK.

The post GiG subsidiaries to pay fine after UK regulator finds shortcomings first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.