Update (Nov. 3, 2026, 7:35 am UTC): This article has been updated to include comments from an FATF spokesperson and additional details from its July 2026 report.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is launching a targeted review of jurisdictions with significant crypto activity, aiming to address gaps in how governments apply global anti-money laundering standards. Because the review will focus on the markets hosting the bulk of global crypto activity, its findings will offer a cross-market view of how the industry’s major jurisdictions apply those standards.

On Friday, the intergovernmental body, which sets global standards for combating money laundering, said the review would focus primarily on jurisdictions with “materially important” virtual asset service provider (VASP) activity, taking their existing assessment status into account. Under FATF’s framework, VASPs — businesses such as exchanges and wallet providers that exchange or transfer crypto on behalf of customers — are expected to be licensed or registered and subject to anti-money laundering controls.

A FATF spokesperson pointed to its July 2026 report, which lists FATF members and other jurisdictions with significant VASP activity. The jurisdictions named in that table — including the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates — account for roughly 97% of the global virtual asset market.

The spokesperson did not confirm which jurisdictions from the existing list would be selected for the review. Initial findings are scheduled for publication in June 2027, with further results to follow in October 2027, making the June release the first public look at the review’s findings.

For non-member jurisdictions, inclusion in the table requires either accounting for more than 0.25% of global crypto trading volume or holding a top-30 ranking for crypto ownership and adoption. The FATF noted that inclusion in the table does not indicate a jurisdiction’s illicit finance risk or its compliance with FATF standards — a distinction worth keeping in mind as the review unfolds, since a large crypto market and a well-supervised one are not the same thing.

Crypto Laws Outpace Enforcement

The July report found that 83% of surveyed jurisdictions had adopted legislation implementing the crypto Travel Rule — a standard FATF extended to virtual assets in 2019 — which requires crypto service providers to share information about the sender and recipient of transfers. Enforcement, however, has lagged: 55 of the 91 jurisdictions with Travel Rule laws had yet to take supervisory or enforcement action over compliance. That distance between enacted rules and active supervision is the type of implementation gap the review is designed to examine.

Authorities also struggled to identify unlicensed crypto businesses and to oversee providers serving local customers from overseas.