Crypto ramp compliance

Despite blazing-fast processes of buying crypto with ramps, a compliance check still happens "under the hood". Big bans and traditional financial institutions accustomed us to long waiting times (sending IBANs on a Friday night is molasses-slow), but crypto operates on different principles, backed by innovative technology and user needs.

As an example, for Ramp, supervision is provided by the Financial Conduct Authority for crypto activity and the Financial Supervision Authority for the open banking activity.

Wait, what's open banking?

Open Banking definition

Open Banking is designed to bring more competition and innovation to financial services. It was set up by the Competition and Markets Authority on behalf of the UK Government. Every provider that uses Open Banking to offer products and services must be regulated by the FCA or European equivalent. At the moment, the nine biggest banks and building societies are enrolled on the Open Banking Directory, and others are coming soon.

Open Banking combats the biggest downside of traditional banking services: long waiting times, slow procedures and lots of bureaucracy.

Some apps and websites currently use screen-scraping, which involves you giving them your login details and password so they can login to your account and analyse your financial information or make payments on your behalf.

With Open banking, you’re never asked to share your password or login details with anyone other than your own bank or building society.

One can think of Open Banking like a multi-institutional, huge API that 3rd-party developers can use to integrate quick, easy and secure payments with all the oversight on big, trusted banks, but no manuak actions or long waiting times. A win-win.

KYC

As by international anti-money laundering (AML) laws, the operators of these services must verify the identity of their users through a Know Your Customer (KYC) check, just like any bank has to do. This  process of verifying identities has been greatly facilitated by external service providers in the recent years.

As a regulated company, we have to make sure we adhere to KYC rules concerning cryptocurrency purchases. In practice, this means that you as a user will need to work with us to verify your identity in order to transact via Ramp. Very often we are able to complete KYC identity verification using your bank account data via open banking API. This process takes seconds, and no physical document is required.

Smart contracts

Smart contracts are used to secure Ethereum transactions facilitated by Instant bank transfer payment option. Smart contracts are used by Ramp open source ‌- they are available here. Moreover, our smart contracts got audited by Quantstamp. We can make the results of the audit available on your request as well.

Clear hands and conscience

An often overlooked, but rather important characteristics of crypto on-ramps is also their place in the ecosystem. Similar to payment gates, crypto ramps don't hold your money - they are a processor, but not a wallet or bank. As such nothing can be stolen, as nothing truly is there.

Total security‌

Due to official regulations, institutional oversight and innovative technology, you can be sure that any and all transactions made with our tool, Ramp, are fully secure and guaranteed. Most crypto ramps use at least some of the solutions mentioned above, but obviously we can only vouch for ours, as we know the source code and strive to keep everything as secure as possible.

Ramp on!