Bitcoin ATM opens and Western Union touts investment in compliance

The bitcoin logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The world’s first bitcoin ATM opened for business in a Vancouver coffee shop this week, allowing bitcoin holders to exchange their dollars for crypto currency.

Customers first register their palm print with the ATM, enter an individual private key – like a PIN number – and exchange bitcoins for Canadian dollars, or deposit dollars which are converted into bitcoins at the Canadian  VirtEx exchange. (XBT1=CD$254).

The end of Silk Road, the on-line marketplace where goods were bough and sold only in bitcoins, has hardly dented the crypto-currencies development or exchange rate.

Better regulation?

Meanwhile, Western Union is also feeling the pinch from increased regulatory demands. On Tuesday, the international money remittance giant forecast a vast increase in spending on compliance in 2014, according to The Tell blog.

“While the Company has increased its investments in compliance considerably in recent years, significant additional investment in 2014 is now anticipated in light of the current environment and our internal reviews of the increasingly complex and demanding global regulatory requirements.”  FROM THE Q3 EARNINGS RELEASE.

That said, in a recent panel discussion on bitcoin regulation, the Dutch financial regulator admitted it has no interest in setting rules for the use of bitcoin. The US issued licensing guidelines for virtual currency administrators operating on US soil, which led to the Mt Gox temporary closure in June this year.

Here’s the panel discussion. It’s a bit long, and the sound quality isn’t great but the Dutch regulator does a great job of fielding most of the questions to the panel. She talks ‘no regulation’ and gets a round of applause at 1:55.

The Department for Financial Services in New York wants to ‘bring virtual currencies out of the darkness and into the light of day through enhanced transparency’ which is a little worrying. Their August press release on the subject harks back to the ‘Wild West‘ for drug traffickers and other faceless bad guys.

I’m hopeful the mood will change and the language used will reflect something closer to the truth and not simply pursue the ‘good vs evil’ standard of demonising what you do not understand.

Until then, I am going Dutch.

 

 

Related articles

• World’s First Bitcoin ATM Opens In Vancouver, Canada (mashable.com)
• Silicon Valley Bank says no to Bitcoin businesses (bitcorati.com)
• Entrepreneurs Bank on Bitcoin ATM (hispanicbusiness.com)

How to open a bank account in Thailand

Opening a bank account has different challenges the world over. Some institutions in certain jurisdictions make the process needlessly complicated, others are free to adopt a more ‘old-fashioned’ attitude to banking.

I’ve been living in Thailand since December 2012 and since I moved here, friends have put me off opening a bank account here as I do not have a Thai work permit or business visa.  The rules for client on-boarding in Thailand have supposedly toughened up in the past 12 months as the government’s Anti-Money Laundering Office has tried to raise banking standards across the country in response to a few bad reports from the international AML community.

In the past, any foreigner could walk into a bank with their passport, give any random address without providing proof and receive a fully functioning savings account with ATM card. No KYC required.

Since new standards have been introduced, foreigners have found it increasingly difficult to open bank accounts in Thailand. The standards however, are applied varyingly. A Malay friend of mine with a business visa and work permit was asked by his bank if he had those documents, but was never asked to produce them as proof. Another acquaintance, who is has overstayed on his visa and is in the country illegally, opened an account without any comment from the bank.

As an experiment, I thought I would try out the new account opening rules.

Friends had already told me which bank to go to for a no questions asked account. So, one afternoon I went to the bank armed with my passport , containing my visa and a few strands of an address which is near where I live.

The cashiers observed me with some alarm when I asked about opening the account, more in connection with a farang showing up unaccompanied by a Thai friend to translate. To my surprise, the customer identification process began immediately. Qs from the bank staff, As are my responses.

Q1. “Oh. You staying here long time?” asked the cashier. I nodded my confirmation.

Thailand guard (Photo credit: @Doug88888)

Q2. “Where you staying?”  –

A2. “In the fishing village.”

At this point the staff conferred with each other, and called on an expert to verify this information. The cashier at the forex counter lived in the fishing village too. She didn’t recognise me, nor I her. This could have been a set back, but it wasn’t.

Q3. Where in fishing village?

A3. “The Coconut Restaurant” – which is almost true. I will be living next to the restaurant in a blue wooden bungalow. I could have given the Blue Bungalow as my address and it would have been ok.

The staff conferred again, decided they didn’t know where the restaurant was, but that it didn’t matter and asked me to write down my name and address and hand over my passport for, what I assumed would be, verification.

I then sat with a bank clerk who spoke and read English well enough to ask me a few more questions, but none of which were remotely associated to the account purpose or how long I planned to be in Thailand. Still, I expected them to ask me to produce a work permit. No request came, just as I was told.

Would anyone like to guess if I got the account or not?

Answers on the back of a KYC form addressed to me at the Blue Bungalow, Thailand.

Related articles

• Opening a bank account in Thailand (thebigmangolife.com)