PANews reported on April 10 that Jack Dorsey's payment company Block, Inc. reached a $40 million settlement with New York State financial regulators due to anti-money laundering loopholes. The consent order issued by the New York State Department of Financial Services on Thursday stated that the investigation found that the financial technology company formerly known as Square "failed to fully consider the significant risks posed by the scale and complexity of its business" when providing Bitcoin services through Cash App. The regulator specifically pointed out that Block had three major loopholes: lack of risk-based anti-money laundering controls, insufficient customer due diligence, and lax treatment of high-risk Bitcoin transactions, resulting in a large number of anonymous transactions not being reviewed. This is the second time this year that Block has paid a settlement for anti-money laundering issues. In January of this year, the company paid $80 million to financial regulators in 48 states.
A Block spokesperson said the settlement marks the resolution of all state remittance license-related issues, and stressed that the company has invested a lot of resources to improve Cash App's compliance system, although it did not admit the results of the investigation. Under the agreement, Block must hire an independent monitor to implement rectification.
