A wire-transfer rule, ported to crypto
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is an intergovernmental body that sets international standards for anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist-financing policy; it doesn't pass binding law itself, but its recommendations strongly shape what member countries legislate domestically. In traditional banking, the 'travel rule' has long required that when money moves between institutions above a certain threshold, originator and beneficiary information, names, account numbers, sometimes addresses, travels along with the payment so each institution in the chain knows who's sending and receiving funds. FATF's 2019 guidance extended this same concept explicitly to crypto, directing countries to require Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs), meaning exchanges, custodians, and similar businesses, to collect and transmit sender and receiver information for qualifying transactions above a set threshold.
The specific threshold and exact implementation details vary somewhat by jurisdiction as each country transposes the FATF recommendation into domestic law, but the underlying requirement is consistent: a VASP sending funds to another VASP on behalf of a customer needs to package identifying information about both the sender and the recipient along with that transaction, not just move the value itself.