Crypto Travel Rule Explained: FATF, MiCA Transfer of Funds and US Requirements

Last updated: 3 November 2026 · every rule, threshold and date below rechecked against the FATF, EU, UK and US primary texts on 3 November 2026

The crypto Travel Rule requires crypto exchanges, custodians and other virtual asset service providers to send the sender’s and recipient’s identifying details along with a transfer, so the provider on the other end knows who is on both sides. It comes from FATF Recommendation 16, which the FATF applied to virtual assets in June 2019.

In the EU it is the Transfer of Funds Regulation (EU) 2023/1113, applying from 30 December 2024 with no minimum amount. The UK has applied it since 1 September 2023, with a £800 trigger for fuller data since 30 June 2026. In the US, the funds transfer rule at 31 CFR 1010.410(f) applies from $3,000.

This explainer puts the four regimes side by side: what data must travel, at which amount, what to do with self-hosted wallets, and what changes between now and 2030. Every rule is linked to its primary text. For the tools that do the messaging, see our crypto compliance tools guide; our sourcing rules are on the methodology page. Nothing here is legal advice.

What the Crypto Travel Rule Requires

Every version answers three questions: who sent it, who receives it, and which account or address was used. The core data set is the same everywhere: originator name, originator account or wallet address, beneficiary name and beneficiary account or address; the regimes differ on extra identifiers and triggers.

The table shows the fields each regime asks the sending provider to pass on.

Field	FATF minimum	EU TFR (Art. 14)	UK (reg 64C)	US (1010.410(f))
Originator name	Always	Always	Always	At $3,000+
Originator account or address	Always	Always (ledger address, plus account where used)	Always (or a transaction identifier)	At $3,000+ if ordered from an account
Originator address, ID number, customer ID or date and place of birth	Above USD/EUR 1,000	Always: address with country, official document number and customer ID, or date and place of birth	One item, from £800 cross-border, or on request within three working days	Address at $3,000+
LEI	Not required	If the message format has the field and the customer gave it	Not required	Not required
Beneficiary name	Always	Always	Always	As received with the order
Beneficiary account or address	Always	Always	Always	As received with the order
Amount and date	Not specified as fields	Not listed in Art. 14	Not listed	Amount and execution date at $3,000+

Two details catch most teams out. In the EU the full originator set, including address or document number, is required on every transfer between providers, whatever the amount. In the US the rule is technology neutral: FinCEN’s 2019 guidance confirmed that money transmitters handling convertible virtual currency are covered by the same funds transfer rules as banks.

Thresholds by Regime

The FATF lets countries choose a de minimis threshold of up to USD/EUR 1,000, below which only names and account numbers need to travel and need not be verified unless there is suspicion. The EU chose no threshold at all, the UK chose £800 for cross-border chains, and the US kept the $3,000 it has used for bank wire transfers since the 1990s. So the same small transfer can be fully in scope in Paris and out of scope in New York.

Transfer between providers	EU	UK, all businesses in the UK	UK, a business outside the UK	US	FATF minimum
Under £800 / EUR 1,000 / $3,000	Full data	Basic data; fuller data on request	Basic data	No federal Travel Rule data	Names and accounts
£800 to just under EUR 1,000	Full data	Basic data; fuller data on request	Full data	No federal Travel Rule data	Names and accounts
EUR 1,000 to under $3,000	Full data	Basic data; fuller data on request	Full data	No federal Travel Rule data	Full data
$3,000 or more	Full data	Basic data; fuller data on request	Full data	Full data	Full data

Note the UK split. Under regulation 64C, when every business in the chain is in the UK, the sender passes names and account numbers and must hand over the fuller originator data within three working days if the receiver asks. When any business is outside the UK, the fuller data must travel with transfers of £800 or more.

The FATF Standard: Recommendation 16 and R.15

The FATF wrote the rule for bank wires as Recommendation 16 and extended it to virtual assets through the interpretive note to Recommendation 15 in June 2019. FATF standards are not law; each country has to legislate them. The Seventh Targeted Update, published in Paris on 16 July 2026, measures how far that has gone.

According to Notabene‘s summary of the report, 91 of 109 responding jurisdictions (83%) had passed Travel Rule legislation, up from 85 of 117 (73%) a year earlier. The weak spot is enforcement: 60% of the jurisdictions with a law had not taken a single supervisory or enforcement action on it. The FATF report also flags P2P transfers through unhosted wallets, stablecoin misuse and offshore VASPs as growing risks.

In June 2025 the FATF also revised Recommendation 16 to tighten payment transparency, with implementation expected by the end of 2030. It does not change crypto obligations overnight, but it is the next standard national laws will be measured against.

EU: The Transfer of Funds Regulation and MiCA

The EU applies the Travel Rule through the recast Transfer of Funds Regulation, which applies from 30 December 2024 in every member state without national transposition. Article 14 makes the crypto-asset service provider of the originator send the full originator and beneficiary data on every transfer, before or at the same time as the transfer, with no minimum amount. The data does not have to sit inside the on-chain transaction itself; it can travel through a separate secure channel.

• Article 14: the sending CASP collects and sends originator name, ledger address and account, address with country plus document number and customer ID (or date and place of birth), and the beneficiary’s name and ledger address or account, and verifies the originator data first.
• Article 16: the receiving CASP must detect missing data and verify the beneficiary data before releasing funds.
• Article 17: if data is missing, reject or return the transfer, or ask for the data before releasing it; repeat offenders can be restricted or cut off.
• Article 26: keep the data for five years, then delete it unless national law requires longer.
• Scope: person to person transfers with no CASP involved are outside the regulation.

The TFR works alongside MiCA. Under MiCA Article 143, firms already serving clients before 30 December 2024 could continue under national rules until 1 July 2026 at the latest, and member states could shorten that window. That transition has now ended everywhere, so any firm still operating needs a CASP authorisation. The EBA Travel Rule guidelines set out how supervisors expect CASPs to detect missing data and handle self-hosted addresses.

UK: Part 7A of the Money Laundering Regulations

The UK added a Travel Rule in Part 7A of the Money Laundering Regulations 2017, in force since 1 September 2023. The Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Amendment) Regulations 2026 replaced the EUR 1,000 trigger with £800 in regulations 64C(4) and 64G(1)(b), effective 30 June 2026. Several guides still quote the euro figure.

• Every inter-business transfer: names of originator and beneficiary (registered name for firms) and account numbers, or a transaction identifier.
• All-UK chain: the fuller originator data on request, within three working days.
• Any business outside the UK and £800 or more: the fuller data travels with the transfer. For an individual that is one of customer ID number, address, ID document number, or date and place of birth.
• Verification and timing: originator data must be verified from an independent source, and the transfer must not go out before the business complies.
• Next: new regulation 34A, enhanced due diligence for crypto correspondent relationships, starts on 1 February 2027.

US: The $3,000 Funds Transfer Rule

The US has no crypto-specific Travel Rule statute. FinCEN applies the Bank Secrecy Act funds transfer rules to crypto money transmitters, as its May 2019 guidance on convertible virtual currency spelled out. Paragraph (f) of 31 CFR 1010.410 makes the sender pass on the transmittor name, account number, address, amount, execution date and recipient institution for transmittals of $3,000 or more. Below $3,000 there is no federal Travel Rule data requirement, though state licensing and the customer’s own KYC still apply.

In October 2020 FinCEN and the Federal Reserve proposed lowering the threshold to $250 for transfers that start or end outside the US. The Spring 2025 regulatory agenda lists that rule, RIN 1506-AB41, as withdrawn on 16 April 2025. Some guides updated in 2026 still describe the $250 cut as pending; it is not.

Self-Hosted Wallets: What Changes

A self-hosted wallet has no provider on the other end to receive the data, so the rule shifts to collecting and checking it yourself. Above EUR 1,000, an EU CASP must also assess whether the self-hosted address is owned or controlled by its own customer, under Articles 14(5) and 16(2) of the TFR. Below that, it still has to obtain and hold the originator and beneficiary data.

Duty	EU	UK
Collect counterparty data	Always obtain and hold originator and beneficiary data	Risk-based requests for names and account data (reg 64G(1)(a))
Ownership or control check	Required over EUR 1,000	No fixed trigger in reg 64G; risk-based
Fuller data on inbound transfers	Not separate	May request fuller originator data at £800 or more (64G(1)(b))
If data is not provided	Reject, return or request (Art. 17)	Must not release the cryptoassets (64G(4))
US	No federal Travel Rule duty for self-hosted transfers; the 2020 unhosted wallet proposal was withdrawn in August 2024	n/a

Common ways to prove control are a signed message from the address, a small test transfer, or a wallet connection that signs a challenge. Pick one that you can log and replay for an auditor.

Four Worked Transfers

Here is how the rules play out on four transfers. The amounts are example numbers we chose to sit either side of each trigger. The same EUR 900 transfer needs full data in the EU, full data when it leaves a UK firm for a foreign one, and no federal Travel Rule data inside the US.

Example transfer	Amount (example)	Data that must travel	Why
EU exchange to EU exchange	EUR 200	Full originator and beneficiary data, verified	TFR has no threshold
UK exchange to EU exchange	£900	Basic data plus one fuller identifier; the EU receiver expects the full TFR set	£800 cross-border trigger; EU receiving duties under Art. 16
US exchange to US exchange	$2,500	No federal Travel Rule data	Below the $3,000 trigger in 1010.410(f)
EU exchange to customer’s self-hosted wallet	EUR 1,500	Obtain and hold both parties’ data; assess ownership or control	Over EUR 1,000 under Art. 14(5)

How the Data Moves: IVMS 101

Regulators say what data must travel, not how. The industry answer is IVMS 101, the interVASP Messaging Standard first released in May 2020 and updated as IVMS 101.2023, which Travel Rule networks use as a common data model. IVMS 101 fixes the field names, so a TRISA, TRP or vendor network message can be mapped to the same originator and beneficiary objects. Here is a trimmed payload for the UK to EU example above, with made-up names and addresses.

{
  "originator": {
    "originatorPersons": [{
      "naturalPerson": {
        "name": {"nameIdentifier": [{"primaryIdentifier": "Example",
                 "secondaryIdentifier": "Alex", "nameIdentifierType": "LEGL"}]},
        "geographicAddress": [{"addressType": "HOME", "townName": "London",
                 "country": "GB"}],
        "customerIdentification": "CUST-0001"
      }
    }],
    "accountNumber": ["0xEXAMPLE0riginatorAddress"]
  },
  "beneficiary": {
    "beneficiaryPersons": [{
      "naturalPerson": {
        "name": {"nameIdentifier": [{"primaryIdentifier": "Sample",
                 "secondaryIdentifier": "Jo", "nameIdentifierType": "LEGL"}]}
      }
    }],
    "accountNumber": ["0xEXAMPLEBeneficiaryAddress"]
  }
}

Store the payload you sent, the counterparty’s acknowledgement and the on-chain transaction hash together. The accountNumber field carries the wallet address for on-chain transfers, so it is also the join key between your Travel Rule log and your blockchain analytics alerts.

What Changes Next

The rule keeps moving. The two dates to plan for now are 1 February 2027, when the UK adds enhanced due diligence for crypto correspondent relationships, and the end of 2030, when the revised FATF Recommendation 16 is expected to be in place. EU firms that relied on the MiCA transition are already past their deadline.

Date	Change	Who it hits
30 Dec 2024	EU TFR applies to crypto transfers	All EU CASPs
16 Apr 2025	US $250 threshold proposal withdrawn	US money transmitters
30 Jun 2026	UK trigger moves from EUR 1,000 to £800	UK cryptoasset businesses
1 Jul 2026	MiCA transitional period ends	EU firms without CASP authorisation
16 Jul 2026	FATF Seventh Targeted Update published	Supervisors, then firms
1 Feb 2027	UK reg 34A crypto correspondent EDD	UK exchanges and custodians
End of 2030	Revised FATF R.16 expected in place	Every FATF jurisdiction

Travel Rule Compliance Checklist

Use this list to test a program before a regulator or banking partner does. The most common failure is not missing software but missing counterparty due diligence: you must know the receiving provider is real and licensed before you send customer data to it.

1. Map every corridor you serve and apply the stricter side’s rule.
2. Collect and verify the full originator data set at onboarding so it is ready for any transfer.
3. Identify the counterparty: provider or self-hosted wallet, and which provider.
4. Run due diligence on counterparty providers before sharing personal data.
5. Send the data before or at the same time as the transfer, through a secure channel.
6. Detect missing inbound data and reject, return or hold funds until it arrives.
7. Run ownership checks on self-hosted addresses above EUR 1,000 for EU flows.
8. Keep Travel Rule records for five years in the EU and link them to analytics alerts.

For vendor choices, our blockchain analytics tools ranking covers the screening side, our Chainalysis vs TRM Labs vs Elliptic comparison goes deeper on the three largest analytics vendors, and our compliance hub collects every guide in this series.

Final Verdict

The crypto Travel Rule is now law in most major markets, and the differences are mostly about thresholds. If you serve EU customers, build to the TFR: full, verified data on every transfer and ownership checks on self-hosted wallets above EUR 1,000; that design also covers the UK, US and FATF minimum.

1. EU: no threshold, verified data on every provider transfer, five-year records.
2. UK: basic data always, fuller data from £800 cross-border since 30 June 2026.
3. US: $3,000 under 31 CFR 1010.410(f); the $250 proposal is withdrawn.
4. FATF: 83% of responding jurisdictions have laws; enforcement is the next push.

Frequently Asked Questions