Ireland published its first National Anti-Money Laundering, Countering Financing of Terrorism and Countering Proliferation Financing Strategy on Thursday, with crypto-asset rules among the reforms it sets out.

The final elements of the EU Transfer of Funds Regulation — Regulation (EU) 2023/1113, the bloc's law on information accompanying fund and crypto-asset transfers — will introduce enhanced checks on transfers involving private crypto wallets and stricter due diligence on overseas crypto firms.

The strategy builds on a 30-point action plan published in June that promised enhanced safeguards around crypto-assets and digital finance.

Most of the EU Transfer of Funds Regulation has already been implemented in Ireland, with the Department of Finance saying the remaining elements create new obligations for crypto-asset service providers. Those obligations include "enhanced checks" on transfers involving private crypto wallets and stricter due diligence when dealing with overseas crypto firms.

Tánaiste @SimonHarrisTD has today launched Ireland’s first National Anti-Money Laundering, Countering Financing of Terrorism & Countering Proliferation Financing Strategy. ➡️ pic.twitter.com/1VzVldlun3 — Department of Finance (@IRLDeptFinance) August 13, 2026

The mechanism is the FATF travel rule — named for the Financial Action Task Force, the Paris-based intergovernmental body that sets global anti-money-laundering standards — under which information on the originator and the beneficiary must accompany a transaction. It extends to crypto a requirement long applied to conventional wire transfers. The strategy document says it arrived alongside MiCA, the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, which created crypto-asset service providers as a category of regulated entity across the bloc. For transfers to and from a customer's own self-hosted wallet, the regulation's verification duties apply once the transfer exceeds €1,000.

Ireland gave crypto firms less time to adjust than most member states, allowing a 12-month grandfathering window — a transition period in which firms could keep operating while their applications for full authorization were assessed — compared with the 18 months permitted under the regulation, according to a list kept by ESMA, the European Securities and Markets Authority. That period ended at the end of December 2025, meaning the new obligations apply to firms that already hold full authorization. Several major crypto firms, including Coinbase and Ripple, have been licensed by the Central Bank of Ireland under MiCA, so the duties reach entities passporting services across the bloc. MiCA came fully into force across the bloc on July 1, and Brussels is preparing to reopen the rulebook in 2027 to cover non-EU stablecoin issuers.

Tánaiste and Minister for Finance Simon Harris said criminal organizations are exploiting new technologies, crypto-assets and complex international financial networks to conceal profits, and that the launch sends the message that "Ireland will not be a safe place to launder criminal proceeds." The strategy runs to 2030.

Thursday's document expands on a 30-point action plan the government published in June alongside its National Risk Assessment, which identified crypto-asset misuse as one of Ireland's evolving financial-crime threats and promised "enhanced safeguards around crypto-assets and digital finance."

A crypto standard for gambling operators

The most concrete domestic crypto measure was set out in that June plan, which tasked the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland with establishing an industry standard for accepting crypto-related activities as a source of funds, with due diligence to verify that the money is legitimate. It is scheduled for the second quarter of 2027.

Ireland's measures sit within a broader EU timetable that tightens further. The bloc's Anti-Money Laundering Regulation bars crypto-asset service providers from providing or holding anonymous crypto-asset accounts, or accounts that allow transactions to be anonymized or further obscured, including through anonymity-enhancing coins. The prohibition does not extend to self-hosted wallets, and exempts providers of hardware, software and self-hosted wallets that have no access to or control over them. The rules apply from July 2027 and will be supervised by the Anti-Money Laundering Authority in Frankfurt — one of several fixed compliance dates, alongside the 2027 gambling standard and the 2027 reopening of MiCA, facing firms authorized in Ireland before the national strategy's 2030 horizon.

Outside the bloc, the UK has been revising its own regime, with HM Treasury publishing draft reforms in September 2025 that would lower the change-in-control notification threshold for crypto firms from 25% to 10%.

The travel rule Ireland is completing transposition of comes from the Paris-based body whose recommendations assess national frameworks and which has been pressing members harder on crypto. In a July report, the FATF said DeFi platforms with identifiable controllers already fall within its rules and should be supervised like other financial firms, and found that nearly 93% of surveyed jurisdictions had yet to apply the standards to any qualifying arrangement.