Money laundering registration
Businesses that deal with sensitive financial transactions are required to be registered with a supervisory authority under the anti-money laundering regulations. This includes: estate agents, currency exchangers, bill payment providers, trust or company service providers.
Those money laundering regulations have recently been tightened up for High Value Dealers (HVD), which are businesses that receive or make cash payments of €10,000 or more for goods acquired in a single transaction. As the Pound is now almost at parity with the Euro, if you take a cash payment for a sale worth £10,000 or more, even if the total amount is paid over several instalments, your business can be classed as an HVD.
This receipts threshold has always been set at €10,000, but since 26 June 2017 a business is also an HVD if it pays for cash goods worth €10,000 or more. This threshold for payments was previously €15,000. If this applies to your business, you must not accept such large cash receipts or make large cash payments until you have registered your business as a high value dealer with a supervisory authority (or with HMRC), to comply with the money laundering regulations.
There is a fee to pay with the registration, and an annual renewal fee. If your business doesn’t comply with the money laundering regulations when required to do so, HMRC can levy a penalty, and if non-compliance persists, HMRC will consider criminal prosecution.
