Liechtenstein Travel Rule Adoption: Ganten Group Chooses 21 Analytics

Since the early Bitcoin days, Klaus Stark, Ganten Group's managing director and partner, has been keen to spread the crypto word in his homeland, Liechtenstein. He has been one of the country's earliest crypto advocates, organizing blockchain meetups to foster the development of the ecosystem since 2016.

Fast forward to 2022 and, besides its small size, Liechtenstein has become prominent in crypto, leveraging its traditional banks and welcoming new virtual asset service providers (VASPs) with the ease to start businesses.

With crypto becoming more relevant to Liechtenstein's economy, the country's financial regulator, Financial Market Authority (FMA), held growing attention. Apart from the market need for regulatory clarity, international demands from bodies like the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) pushed FMA to implement the Travel Rule. This recommendation requires companies to exchange personal information of the people involved in a crypto transfer, demanding that the data "travels" with the transaction.

The regulator showed it understood the difficulties of such a rule for virtual assets, acknowledging the obstacles and accepting distinct workflows depending on data availability. Despite being developed in Switzerland, 21 Travel Rule is adaptable to each jurisdiction's requirements, which is also beneficial to Liechtenstein-based VASPs. That is precisely what caught Klaus Stark's attention:

As experts in international wealth management, Ganten Group works to find the best investment solutions for their clients, which often mean crypto services. Holding a TT Token Depository license, they are registered with the FMA and allowed to transact virtual assets in the name of their clients.

The missing piece to Klaus' team's new crypto offerings was the novel and challenging Travel Rule requirement. With transparency and efficiency as key values of Ganten Group, the company found the solution for a rapid and safe Travel Rule compliance in 21 Analytics' solution. 

Another essential benefit of 21 Travel Rule has been the way such sensitive data is handled. For Klaus, sharing their customer's personal information with a third party is not an option, and therefore SaaS is off the table. 21 Analytics has given Ganten Group the tools and support to comply with the Travel Rule without ever seeing the sensitive data the company transacts.

"21 Travel Rule allows Ganten Group to protect our client's data by storing it on our own servers in Liechtenstein."

Ganten Group's effort is great news to the Travel Rule Protocol (TRP) and OpenVASP community. Another VASP live using TRP shows its excellent compliance capabilities and how it is ready for any crypto company's needs, regardless of their jurisdiction. Join the discussion and learn more about the working group.

Read Liechtenstein's Travel Rule Regulation.