Binance's Compliance Drive Continues With New Elliptic Partnership

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance is continuing to ramp up its regulatory compliance efforts.

The exchange has just partnered with blockchain analytics startup Elliptic to boost its compliance and security capabilities, Elliptic announced Thursday. The new partnership – the third relating to compliance in the last two months – will help Binance combat money laundering as it grows into new jurisdictions, the exchange’s chief compliance officer Samuel Lim said.

Elliptic's software helps identify potential transactions linked to illicit activities such as money laundering and terrorist financing, and is claimed to have monitored risks for transactions worth “several trillion dollars.”

Last month, Binance also partnered with blockchain analytics firm CipherTrace to enhance its anti-money laundering processes like tracing the source of on-chain funds and matching user identities to problematic wallet addresses.

The exchange also works with IdentityMind on know-your-customer (KYC) compliance, thanks to a deal signed in March, as well as with Chainalysis, Refinitiv (formerly the financial risk division of Thomson Reuters) and the Blockchain Transparency Institute.

Binance was recently identified as having a “high” regulatory risk based on “exposure to anonymous activity” by reg-tech startup Coinfirm. The exchange’s KYC processes were also said to be “the industry’s least rigorous,” according to a Bloomberg report last year.

Since then, the exchange has been addressing that perceived shortfall in procedures.

“We are very serious about improving our compliance standards. We will continue to build our [compliance] team, continue to re-invest in the compliance space,” Lim told CoinDesk last month, adding:

“Compliance is always a quest, you are always on a journey to improve your compliance.”

Binance image via Shutterstock