6. Banxico's regulatory actions

Based on the above, it is considered necessary for Mexico to have clear rules aimed at preventing the use of virtual assets in activities such as money laundering and the fight against financing, as well as rules that seek to protect consumers. Thus, Banco de México, derived from the powers granted to it by the Law to Regulate Financial Technology Institutions, as well as its role as regulator of the Interbank Electronic Payments System (SPEI), has issued regulations that seek to achieve these objectives.

6.1. Regulation on the operation with virtual assets by Financial Technology Institutions and Credit Institutions

It is considered that in addition to the deficiencies described above, if a financial institution were to offer services to the general public that involve virtual assets, thanks to the reputation of such institutions, a perception could be generated that the risks associated with the assets are less relevant than they actually represent. Likewise, virtual assets still represent a considerable risk in terms of money laundering and terrorist financing prevention due to the anonymity provided by this type of assets in carrying out transactions, the ease of transferring virtual assets to different countries, as well as the absence of homogeneous controls and measures at a global level.

Despite the above, the Central Bank does not seek to restrict the use of technologies that could have a benefit from the perspective of efficiency or functionality, as long as these technologies are used in the context of the internal operation of Financial Technology Institutions (ITF) and Credit Institutions (IC) and this in turn does not imply a significant increase in their operational or financial risks. In other words, the use of technology such as distributed registers, blockchain or even virtual assets themselves in their internal processes could become feasible with prior authorization from Banco de México, as long as the risks of virtual assets do not impact the end consumer.

For this reason, Banco de México presented a regulation establishing a mechanism for authorization requests in which interested institutions are required to present the way in which they will address the risks associated with the operation with virtual assets in case they decide to use them for their internal operation, without considering any type of authorization that implies the operation with virtual assets for the client, since it is considered that the provision of services related to virtual assets to the general public by financial institutions is not convenient and the risks associated with virtual assets should not impact the end user.

Although FTTs or CIs are not authorized to offer transactions with virtual assets to the general public, this does not imply that other companies cannot offer services related to virtual assets. Such is the case of virtual asset exchange houses that offer the service of buying and selling virtual assets to the public, which, as long as they do not carry out fundraising activities or custody of resources in local currency or sectionisas of their clients, could continue to offer their services. In this way, virtual asset trading services could be accessed in Mexico at the risk of whoever decides to carry out such transactions and with the clarity that they are not backed by any financial institution.

Currently, there is no regime for the prevention of transactions with resources of illicit origin or financing of terrorism that applies to those persons other than financial entities that, on a regular and professional basis, offer the exchange of virtual assets through electronic, digital or similar platforms, that such persons manage or operate, facilitating or performing purchase or sale transactions of such assets owned by their clients or provide means to custody, store, or transfer virtual assets. However, through amendments to the Federal Law for the Prevention and Identification of Transactions with Illicit Proceeds, published on March 9, 2018, these persons will be subject to the regime of such Law as of September 2019.