FATF crypto compliance sets the global AML standards — risk-based screening, the Travel Rule, VASP obligations — that exchanges follow; Plastron lets you preview the wallet-screening side of those standards free, not as licensed compliance.

The Financial Action Task Force is the intergovernmental body that sets the global standard for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing. Its Recommendations are not directly binding law, but over 200 jurisdictions have committed to implementing them, and FATF mutual evaluations assess whether those implementations are effective. For the crypto industry, the critical development was the 2019 update to Recommendation 15, which clarified that VASPs are subject to the same AML obligations as traditional financial institutions — customer due diligence, transaction monitoring, suspicious activity reporting, and the Travel Rule for transfers above threshold. FATF has since published detailed guidance on virtual assets, addressing DeFi risks, unhosted wallets, and stablecoin-specific concerns. The FATF Recommendations do not prescribe specific blockchain analytics tools, but they do require a risk-based approach: VASPs must assess the risk of each customer relationship and each transaction type, and apply appropriate controls. For wallet-level screening, this means having a mechanism to identify whether a customer's wallet has sanctions exposure, mixer involvement, or other high-risk indicators — and acting on that information in a documented way. Individual users are not directly regulated under FATF, but the exchanges and services they use are, which is why wallet risk screening affects everyone who transacts with regulated platforms. Understanding the FATF framework helps clarify why exchanges behave the way they do, and why a wallet risk score matters even if you are not a compliance professional.