FATF

FATF (Financial Action Task Force) is an intergovernmental body founded in 1989 at the initiative of the G7. As of the mid-2020s it has 39 member jurisdictions plus two regional organisations (the European Commission and the Gulf Cooperation Council), and nine FATF-style regional bodies (FSRBs) covering more than 200 countries in total.

What FATF does

FATF is not a supervisor and does not license banks or crypto firms directly. Its core mandate is producing the FATF 40 Recommendations, the global standard for anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing (CFT). Countries then transpose those recommendations into domestic law.

Each member jurisdiction undergoes a periodic mutual evaluation — a thorough review of how well its AML/CFT regime aligns with the standards and how effective it is in practice. Each evaluation produces a public report rating compliance recommendation by recommendation.

Recommendation 15 and crypto

Before 2018, crypto barely appeared in FATF’s recommendations. In 2018 Recommendation 15 (New Technologies) was updated, and in 2019 dedicated guidance on virtual assets was issued. Key definitions:

• Virtual Asset (VA) — a digital representation of value that can be transferred, traded, or used for payments. This covers both Toncoin and jettons.
• Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) — any person or entity that, as a business, provides services for exchanging VAs for fiat, exchanging one VA for another, transferring VAs, custodial storage, or participation in token issuance.

VASPs must be licensed or registered, perform customer due diligence (KYC), monitor transactions, and file suspicious activity reports. A specific obligation is the Travel Rule: when funds move between VASPs, sender and beneficiary information must be transmitted alongside the transaction.

Grey and black lists

In addition to standards, FATF maintains two public lists of countries:

• High-Risk Jurisdictions Subject to a Call for Action (the black list) — through the 2020s consistently includes North Korea, Iran, and Myanmar. Financial institutions in other countries must apply enhanced measures or avoid transactions altogether.
• Jurisdictions under Increased Monitoring (the grey list) — countries that have acknowledged AML shortcomings and committed to addressing them. The composition rotates over time.

Being grey-listed does not block access to the global financial system, but it raises the cost of correspondent banking and creates reputational pressure on local financial firms.

Impact on the TON ecosystem

FATF has no direct authority over the TON blockchain — its standards address jurisdictions, not networks. But through national implementation, FATF effectively decides:

• which crypto businesses (exchanges, custodians, on-ramp providers) qualify as VASPs in a given country;
• the KYC procedures required for buying Toncoin with fiat;
• the personal-data exchange that accompanies large on-chain transfers between exchanges under the Travel Rule;
• how willing banks are to serve crypto firms, which in turn drives the availability of fiat ramps.

As a result, many of the restrictions a user encounters on a centralised exchange or in a wallet ultimately trace back to FATF, even if only a domestic regulator is named on the page.