News

Italy's Unita di Informazione Finaziaria, or UIF, has joined the list of European anti-money laundering supervisors whose recent examinations suggest more concern around the potential use of virtual international bank account numbers, or IBANs, for illicit finance. Two of the 11 onsite inspections and four of the seven offsite inspections that UIF, which also serves as Italy's financial intelligence unit, began in the first half of 2023 focused on virtual IBANs, codes up to 34 characters long that payment service providers, or PSPs, and other fintechs offer foreign clients, usually by leveraging master accounts at mainstream banks. Virtual IBANs function...