The company, created to launch the Facebook Libra cryptocurrency project, has applied for licensing as a payment system in Switzerland.
The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) has confirmed to the media that it has received a request. The regulator added that the range of services offered by the Libra Association will require additional control.
“Due to the release of Libra payment tokens, the services planned by the Libra project will clearly go beyond a purely payment system,” the FINMA statement said that additional requirements would be made to Libra in this regard.
In the “indicative classification” of the Libra project, FINMA stated that the project is subject to regulation of the financial market infrastructure and, as currently planned, “will require a FINMA payment system license”.
Regulators around the world are concerned that Libra will increase the risk of money laundering through its global cryptocurrency, available to billions of Facebook users. Just yesterday, Segal Mandelker, US Under Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Intelligence and Terrorism, said Facebook’s Libra must meet the highest regulatory standards before the project is launched.
FINMA also drew attention to the fact that the Swiss payment system “automatically falls” under the scope of the Anti-Money Laundering Act.
According to Reuters, the Libra Association said:
“We are engaged in a constructive dialogue with FINMA, and we see a real way for the open-source blockchain to become a regulated payment system with a low level of friction and a high degree of security”
According to Reuters, the global anti-money laundering organization, the Financial Action Task Force on Anti-Money Laundering (FATF), is also studying the Libra project.
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