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29 July 2005

EU Regulation on Wire Transfers: a consultation document

The European Commission has published a proposal for a regulation to tighten controls on money transfers in order to restrict funding sources for terrorists and other criminals. The proposed regulation implements the seventh special recommendation of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) within the European Union.

This proposed Regulation:

  • Sets out the extent of information to identify the originators of wire transfers that payment service providers must obtain, verify and retain;
  • Requires the transmission of this information with wire transfers,
  • Sets out the responsibilities of the recipient’s payment service provider in checking that this information has been obtained and sent with the transfer.

The UK believes that the proposed regulation provides the best means to agree a proportionate and workable regime in accordance with the agreement reached at the FATF. This consultation exercise is intended to assist HM Treasury in negotiating a final agreement on the text of the Regulation. The European Commission has requested written responses to its proposal by 12 September 2005. This will allow discussion to begin in September, which will assist the UK Presidency of the European Union in providing for a political agreement on the Regulation before the end of December 2005. This target deadline has been set to allow payment service providers sufficient time to introduce the systems and procedures that will be required under the regulation, which will come into effect on 1 January 2007.

The consultation document ‘EU Regulation on Wire Transfers’ sets out the details of the consultation process and includes a Partial Regulatory Impact Assessment that examines the proposed Regulation in detail.

HM Treasury welcomed written responses to the consultation document before 8 September 2005.

EU Regulation on wire transfers : a consultation document is available in Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF). If you do not have Adobe Acrobat installed on your computer you can download the software free of charge from the Adobe website. For alternative ways to read PDF documents and further information on website accessibility visit the HM Treasury accessibility page.

Media links

The Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2007 were laid in Parliament in November 2007

This regulation creates new rules to enforce the existing European Regulation on information to accompany transfers of funds.

EC Regulation 1781/2006/EC created requirements on firms that make or receive transfers; this regulation makes provision for the supervision of the firms effected and provides enforcement powers for the supervisors.

This regulation takes effect on 15th December 2007.

PDF file of The Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2007 (72KB)

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