We get a lot of people asking why it is that they have to jump through so many verification hoops, giving us photos of ID and posing with ID, etc just to be able to buy some cryptocurrency. Well rest assured that it’s all for a very good reason – and that is due to the AML Regulation that is enacted by the government of New Zealand.

Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism Act 2009 is a regulation enacted by the government of New Zealand to help improve its ability to eliminate and deter money laundering activities.

Like all other (reputable) cryptocurrency exchanges and brokers in New Zealand, we are required to comply with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations.

As well as complying with the law, we also think it’s important for our customers to understand why we do this. While “AML” is the typical explanation used for these checks and processes, there’s more to it than just that. Some of it is about being compliant with the law, some is about protecting our customers, and some is about just being decent people.
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The most basic of all reasons is that we need to be able to see that:

There are some other very good reasons behind it, so we thought we’d give you a quick rundown on why we have to do what we do, and why it’s making things better for you.

There are unfortunately far too many people out there using scams and fraud to get access to your money. We have to make sure that someone who has gotten fraudulent access to another person’s bank account can’t then use those funds to buy cryptocurrencies through us.

And even if a bank account hasn’t been hacked and someone is genuinely paying us, we need to make sure they know who they are paying, and what they’re paying for. People can be tricked into sending us money through what is known as a “man in the middle” scam.

Human trafficking, child sexual exploitation and just plain ol’ money laundering. There’s lots of bad stuff that people can use cryptocurrency for, and we don’t want any part in enabling those activities.

While the nature of some cryptocurrencies can make it hard to trace transactions, international best practice is to control the places where money flows from fiat (i.e. normal money) into cryptocurrency. We are one of those places, so we have obligations to be able to tell the authorities, if asked, who has been buying through us.

And we will give up that information if requested (see our T&Cs) so if you’re a terrible human and doing any of those things above, don’t come through us!

Lastly, we need to know who you are, so that we can give you great customer service. If you contact us because of an issue with an order, we need to be able to confirm that it’s definitely you contacting us, and not someone pretending to be you to try to gain fraudulent access to your crypto.

There are good reasons why we do it. It’s about protecting you and others and doing our bit to make the world a better place.

This is called ‘Nature and Purpose’, and it is a requirement to collect this information.

Some of the questions maybe:

We always give plenty of opportunity for you to review our terms of service, provide the information requested and decide how you would like to proceed.
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This is all to protect our business and our customers and ensure that we can continue to do what we love, enabling Kiwis to be part of the crypto world.
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