BNK Busan Bank is discussing a real-name deposit and withdrawal account (real-name account) contract with five small and medium-sized cryptocurrency exchanges such as Gopax.
As of the 22nd, the exchanges identified as being in discussion with Busan Bank are Gopax, Gdak, Huobi Korea, Flybit, and ProBit.
However, the contract has not yet been completed, and the level of discussion is different for each exchange. An official at Busan Bank said, “We are reviewing whether or not to issue real-name accounts to Gopax, Huobi Korea, and Gdak,” he said. “It is difficult to say when (account issuance) will be confirmed.”
“The review and the actual contract are completely separate things,” he said. “Even if you’re reviewing multiple places, it’s likely that the actual handing out of the account will be much less than that.”
An official from Gopax said, “We also completed the system linkage test with Busan Bank in 2020, but nothing has been done since then.” A representative of a small and medium-sized exchange said, “As the news that Busan Bank is considering issuing a real-name account spreads to the industry, several small and medium-sized exchanges are contacting Busan Bank.”
As the revised bill of the’Act on Reporting and Use of Specific Financial Transaction Information (Special Act)’ goes into effect from March 25th, exchanges must report to Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASP) by September 24th. The Financial Services Commission’s requirements for accepting reports include’real-name accounts’.
Currently, there are only 4 exchanges that meet this requirement: Bithumb, Upbit, Coinone, and Corbit. Although several exchanges have been trying to secure real-name accounts, there are no additional exchanges issued due to the negative trend of financial authorities and the high risk of money laundering. In the cryptocurrency industry, there is a prospect that at most one or two will be added out of the current four.
Meanwhile, the Federation of Banks is creating explanatory data that banks can refer to when evaluating the level of money laundering risk in cryptocurrency exchanges. In this discussion, commercial banks’ anti-money laundering (AML) departments, and working-level staff from the Compliance Team are participating.
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