Ireland has launched its first National Anti-Money Laundering Strategy, introducing enhanced verification requirements for cryptocurrency transfers involving private, self-custodied wallets. The move, announced Thursday by the Department of Finance, aligns with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Travel Rule and signals a broader regulatory tightening across the European Union.
Under the new framework, crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) operating in Ireland will be required to verify information on both senders and recipients in transactions involving self-custodied wallets. The strategy also mandates enhanced customer due diligence when dealing with overseas crypto firms, closing gaps where self-custodied wallets—those not held by an exchange or custodian—have been harder to trace.
The strategy builds on a 30-point action plan published in June alongside Ireland's National Risk Assessment, which named crypto-asset misuse among the country's evolving financial-crime threats and promised "enhanced safeguards around crypto-assets and digital finance." Tánaiste and Minister for Finance Simon Harris stated that criminal organizations are exploiting new technologies, crypto-assets, and complex international financial networks to conceal profits, adding that the launch sends the message that "Ireland will not be a safe place to launder criminal proceeds."
The strategy, set to run through 2030, arrives as the EU completes implementation of its Transfer of Funds Regulation. Most provisions are already in force in Ireland, and the remaining elements introduce new obligations for CASPs, including enhanced checks on transfers involving private crypto wallets and stricter due diligence on overseas crypto firms. Ireland granted crypto firms a 12-month grandfathering window against the 18 months permitted by regulation, a period that closed at the end of December 2025.
MiCA, the EU's crypto-asset regulatory framework, came fully into force across the bloc on July 1. Brussels is preparing to reopen the rulebook in 2027 to cover non-EU stablecoin issuers. Separately, the EU's Anti-Money Laundering Regulation bars crypto-asset service providers from providing or holding anonymous crypto-asset accounts from July 2027, though self-hosted wallets and providers of hardware or software wallets that hold no access to or control over them are exempt from the ban.
The most concrete domestic crypto measure in Ireland's plan tasks the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland with establishing an industry standard for accepting crypto-related activities as a source of funds, with due diligence to verify the money is legitimate. That standard is slated for the second quarter of 2027.
Outside the bloc, the UK is reworking its own regime, with HM Treasury publishing draft reforms in September 2025 that would lower the change-in-control notification threshold for crypto firms from 25% to 10%. In a July report, the FATF said that DeFi platforms with identifiable controllers already fall within its rules and should be supervised like other financial firms, finding that nearly 93% of surveyed jurisdictions had yet to apply the standards to any qualifying arrangement.
