Shyft Adds FATF Veterans as Advisors for Its Crypto Compliance Product

Shyft Network has hired two former Financial Action Task Force (FATF) executives as advisors to assist development of its regulatory compliance product.

FATF’s former executive secretary Rick McDonell was added to the blockchain firm’s board, along with the former head of the Canadian delegation to the FATF, Josee Nadeau. Both held their respective positions at the FATF – a global money-laundering watchdog – for nearly a decade or more.

Shyft Network operates a digital identity protocol for permissioned and permissionless blockchains in both private and public ecosystems. Most recently, the firm worked with Bermuda’s government to roll out the first phase of a digital ID solution for citizens, visitors, enterprises, and civil bodies.

It’s also building a pan-industry product in partnership with CipherTrace that’s aimed to help cryptocurrency exchanges align with tough new rules from the FATF announced this June.

The new “travel rule” guidance for FATF member nations sets out that “virtual asset providers” (VASPS) must obtain, hold and share know your customer (KYC) information with other VASPS and potentially governmental bodies for cryptocurrency transfers above a certain threshold.

So far, crypto exchanges lack a compliant way to share KYC data that also maintains user privacy.

Shyft said it has teamed up with some of the “top 10” cryptocurrency exchanges to develop its solution to that problem using its identity passporting, database bridging and data attestation network.

Miniature handshake via Shutterstock