What are the risk indicators for currency exchange services?
A range of typologies indicate that currency exchange services can be used to facilitate money laundering and/or the financing of terrorism. Exchanging foreign currency could be used in the placement stage of money laundering. In the case of physical currency exchange, transactions are quite often anonymous as customers are not regular customers of the business. The following circumstances may indicate a risk of money laundering or terrorism financing in connection with currency exchange services: (30) • client does not enquire about exchange rate • frequent exchanges of cash into other currencies, where there appears to be no logical explanation for such activity • customer exchanges small denomination notes for larger denomination notes in foreign currency • customer presents with multiple small currency notes • foreign currency exchanges immediately followed by wire transfers • drafts cashed for foreign currency, for example, euros, US dollars.
