Money laundering risks of prepaid stored value cards

摘要

In the past decade, there has been an increasing reliance on electronic means of transferring funds for personal and business purposes. One recent development has been the emergence of plastic cards with the capacity to store value electronically, which can be used for a range of retail transactions. With the advent of comprehensive anti-money laundering laws throughout the developed world, criminals are turning to alternative ways of moving funds across borders to circumvent reporting and detection systems. One identified risk is the misuse of prepaid stored value cards to keep the proceeds of crime and move them across borders without alerting law enforcement and financial intelligence units. This paper describes the nature of these risks and considers whether existing regulatory measures are adequate to address them.