South Korea's Financial Supervisory Service and Other Agencies Join Forces to Crack Down on Cryptocurrency "Exchange" and Illegal Overseas Withdrawals

Techub News reports that the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), the Customs Service, the Credit Finance Association, and nine credit card companies signed a “Public-Private Cooperation Agreement to Block Cross-Border Crime Funds” on the same day. The agreement links overseas credit card usage details with entry and exit records through correlation analysis to cut off the money flow of phone scams and virtual asset crimes at the source. Previously, information gaps meant that although the Customs Service had entry and exit data, it couldn’t monitor abnormal overseas spending in real time, and credit card companies had payment data but lacked customs clearance updates. Under the new system, the Customs Service will provide credit card companies with high-risk transaction trends, and the FSS will develop guidelines and authorize credit card companies to directly interrupt transactions when anomalies are detected. FSS Director Lee Chan-jin stated that this move marks the establishment of a normalized monitoring system in South Korea to prevent the outflow of criminal proceeds overseas from the source. The system mainly targets precise enforcement against “currency exchange” activities involving overseas credit cards used for cash withdrawals at foreign ATMs and money laundering through cryptocurrencies.