Germany Money Laundering Act Crypto-Asset AML and Transfer Regime

The GwG establishes Germany’s domestic AML framework, including risk management, customer due diligence, recordkeeping, internal safeguards, and suspicious-activity reporting obligations for covered “obliged entities.” For crypto activity, the current regime should be read together with MiCA terminology, the EU Transfer of Funds Regulation, BaFin supervisory guidance, and Germany’s FinmadiG amendments.

The practical result is a layered framework. The GwG supplies the national AML duties and supervisory hooks; Regulation (EU) 2023/1113 supplies travel-rule information requirements for covered crypto-asset transfers; and BaFin guidance explains how the German supervisor expects covered financial-sector entities to apply the law in practice.

• Obliged-entity scope: Section 2 of the GwG now expressly covers crypto-asset service providers as defined by MiCA, where they provide one or more crypto-asset services, with a carve-out for standalone crypto-asset advice. Certain issuers of asset-referenced tokens are also brought into the AML perimeter.
• Core AML controls: Covered entities must maintain risk-based AML controls, customer due diligence, internal safeguards, recordkeeping, and suspicious-activity reporting processes under the GwG framework.
• Travel-rule information: Regulation (EU) 2023/1113 extends information-accompanying-transfer rules to certain crypto-asset transfers involving EU crypto-asset service providers. EBA travel-rule guidelines apply from Dec. 30, 2024 and address missing or incomplete transfer information.
• Self-hosted addresses: Section 15a GwG adds enhanced due diligence for crypto-asset transfers to or from a self-hosted address. Covered entities must assess money laundering, terrorist financing, and targeted financial sanctions circumvention risks and apply appropriate mitigating measures.
• Supervisory guidance: BaFin’s 2025 interpretation and application guidance addresses crypto-asset service providers, crypto-transfer valuation, ongoing monitoring, and self-hosted-address due diligence in the German AML context.

The original GwG was enacted on June 23, 2017 and entered into force on June 26, 2017. Germany first expanded its crypto AML perimeter in 2020 when crypto custody business became a regulated financial service and related providers became AML-obliged entities. Germany then used the Kryptowertetransferverordnung as a transitional crypto travel-rule instrument before the EU recast Transfer of Funds Regulation became applicable.

The current profile status is in force. FinmadiG was published in December 2024, and the current crypto-asset transfer framework took effect alongside the EU Transfer of Funds Regulation’s Dec. 30, 2024 application date. Germany’s prior national Kryptowertetransferverordnung expired on that same date, as later announced by the Federal Ministry of Finance.

Germany remains the jurisdiction for the GwG, BaFin supervision, and national AML enforcement architecture. The travel-rule layer, however, is EU law and applies directly across Member States. German readers should therefore treat this profile as a Germany-specific view of a regime that is partly national and partly EU-level.

Editors may link this profile to the Germany jurisdiction archive, the EU Transfer of Funds Regulation profile, the EU MiCA profile, and future coverage of the EU AML package. The next major review point is July 10, 2027, when the EU AML Regulation is scheduled to apply directly and Member States are expected to have transposed the accompanying AML directive, subject to statutory exceptions.