Anti-Money Laundering – Amendment to the Regulations Regarding Non-Banking Credit Card and Pre-Paid Card Issuers

Resolution No. 7/2013 (the “Resolution”) the Financial Information Unit (the “UIF”) modified Resolution No. 2/2012 (the “Amended Resolution”) in order to ease the Know Your Customer (the “KYC”) duties and obligations imposed by the Amended Resolution on the Obliged Subjects under the Resolution (i.e. (i) issuers of travelers checks; (ii) non-banking issuers of credit cards; (iii) non-banking issuers of purchase cards; (iv) non-banking entities which pay to the participating stores under the credit card or purchase card system; and (v) issuers of “prepaid cards”, both rechargeable and not rechargeable)with respect to certain “Clients”. Accordingly, it established that KYC’s duties and obligations of the Obliged Subjects with respect to “Additional Users” or “Beneficiaries” of credit card extensions shall be limited only to collecting personal data. On the other hand, the Resolution has elevated the threshold regarding collection of patrimonial data with respect to “cardholders” of pre-paid cards. Indeed, the Obliged Subjects will only be obliged to request patrimonial data and a sworn statement concerning the legality of the origin of funds (as established in the Amended Resolution) for the cases in which pre-paid cards for an amount of Ar$ 4,000 or more are issued. Below such threshold, Obliged Subjects will comply with the KYC’s duties and obligations by collecting only the corresponding personal data.

Furthermore, the Resolution introduced the following modifications to the Amended Resolution: (i) it has included in the definition of “Clients”, anyone carrying out transactions with “travel checks”; and (ii) it has added a subsection to the Section 18 (which refer to the obligations of the Obliged Subjects) whereby it has established that, unless there is a suspicion of money-laundering or terrorism financing, the information provided by public agencies regarding clients using credit cards for crediting social plans, shall be sufficient to fulfill the KYC duties and obligations.

The Resolution became effective as from its publication in the Official Gazette (i.e. January 14, 2013).