The Importance of KYC
What is KYC?
KYC, in case you are unaware, stands for Know Your Customer.
In other words, it is the steps taken by a financial institution to establish customer identity, verify the legitimacy of the sources of the customer’s funds, and obtaining detailed anti-money laundering (AML) information from the customers.
KYC protects both parties in a business transaction and relationship and helps in preventing liability, aids in combating the financing of terrorism (CFT) and aims to avoid association with money laundering.
Why the Need for KYC in the Crypto Space?
A big concern for most governments and regulators is that criminal activities are being conducted in the crypto space and are beyond the jurisdiction of existing laws.
The financial action task force (FATF) travel rule, which has been around for more than 2 years, requires originators and beneficiaries of all transfers of digital funds (crypto included) to exchange identifying information. This essentially means that KYC is required.
The crypto space has come a long way since then, and as adoption increases and the industry scales up, governments and regulators feel an obligation to provide oversight in a more assertive manner.
This can happen in both positive and negative ways.
For the past few weeks, negativity had spread as fear, uncertainty, and doubt (also known as FUD) gripped the crypto space. Governments and regulators flexed their collective strength to address what they viewed as shortfalls in the existing system.
It began with China’s crackdown on Bitcoin mining and exchange activities in May. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) then opined that Bitcoin exchange traded funds (ETF) are not likely in the near term due to concerns of manipulation and under-decentralisation. There is increased scrutiny on crypto exchanges as well. Binance is in the limelight for the wrong reasons as its affiliates got banned in the UK, Italy and Ontario, Canada, while Germany, Japan, US and Thailand are all launching independent probes for wrongdoings. US treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, also told regulators in late June that the US government must move quickly to establish a regulatory framework for stablecoins, which are the backbone of crypto markets. And most recently, the EU imposed a requirement of KYC to ensures full traceability of crypto asset transfers for prevention and detection of their possible use for money laundering or terrorism financing.
As can be seen, governments and regulators are sitting up and looking at regulating all things crypto. We can expect KYC to become a necessity in the near future, with more financial accountability to follow as safeguards to protect the interests of investors, as well as ensure AML/CFT.
Mars Panda’s Efforts in Compliance
A salient feature of Mars Panda is that we are built from the ground up with compliance to regulations in mind.
For our NFT Marketplace, we require all creators and users to come onboard with our KYC and whitelisting process. This affords protection to all stakeholders and also reduces the likelihood of fraud and undesired activities from bad actors.
The sales and distribution of our Mars Panda Token (MPT) is handled by Legatus Global Pte Ltd, which is an entity that has obtained a regulatory exemption under the Payment Services Act (“PSA”) for digital payments token services. This ensures that MPT sales and distribution are performed in accordance with current agreed processes, of which KYC is a requirement.
More compliance measures are in the pipeline too as we launch more features on the Mars Panda ecosystem. All these to ensure a safe environment for our users and also that we remain on the right side of the law.
As you can see, Mars Panda believes in doing things the right way. So, come onboard now and play the world, with confidence and a peace of mind.
About Mars Panda
Mars Panda is a complete eco-system which consists of:
• Games, Social Media and Ecommerce Aggregation
• Yield farming DeFi
• Mars Panda game with NFT game elements
• NFT Marketplace
We aim to fuse mainstream eCommerce and Gaming to the crypto world of NFTs and DeFi, on one seamless, unified platform.
Find us at:
Legatus Global Pte Ltd is an entity that has obtained a regulatory exemption under the Payment Services Act (“PSA”) for digital payments token services. Legatus Global is commissioned to handle the issuance of Mars Panda Token (MPT) as well as the KYC/AML during the private sales and distribution of tokens to private investors. Legatus Global is also handling the process for private sales and distribution.
