Announcing Merchant Sentinel: Cost Effective Compliance for Banks Serving High Risk Merchants
August 20, 2015
We’re proud to announce today the release of our Merchant Sentinel Program.
Merchant Sentinel provides banks and their high-risk clients with a common compliance framework, offering automated capabilities for monitoring, detecting, preventing and reporting suspicious money laundering activities (AML), as well as domestic and international support for Know Your Customer (KYC), sanctions screening, and fraud prevention.
– Xapo, Bitcoin Wallet & Vault
Many financial institutions have been forced to terminate high-risk merchants in response to regulators’ risk guidelines for merchant portfolios- a strategy now referred to as de-risking. Merchant accounts including Money Service Businesses (MSBs), Virtual Currency businesses, Internet Lending, Crowdfunding, FBO Accounts, and those operating in high-risk or suspicious countries are progressively being limited, or denied services. These businesses present lost opportunities for institutions, and may have dramatic repercussions for the audiences who depend on them. While regulators are offering more constructive guidance, merchant-servicing banks are still struggling to find the balance between servicing high risk, and compliance.
“We developed the Merchant Sentinel program following the success of our platform in helping top-tier banking clients manage risk and compliance while serving customers in high-risk industries“ said Garrett Gafke, IdentityMind’s President and CEO. “Our platform provides an essential reinforcement, allowing our clients to maintain the highest standards and AML practices with their compliance programs.
“We identified four key capabilities essential for an effective solution,“ said Jose Caldera, IdentityMind VP of Marketing & Product:
“With Merchant Sentinel, we’ve pulled these capabilities together in an affordable, easy-to-integrate package. It was important to us that any Bank be able to quickly and easily apply Merchant Sentinel to reinforce their current risk program.”
Merchant Sentinel builds on the past success of the IdentityMind platform, combining IdentityMind’s established capabilities with a united risk & compliance interface, simplified deployment, and automated policies to provide a cost effective, operational framework for achieving compliance while servicing high risk merchants.
You can find the full press release here.