What is FINTRAC?

The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) is Canada's financial intelligence unit and anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing supervisor. Its mandate is to facilitate the detection, prevention, and deterrence of money laundering and the financing of terrorist activities while ensuring the protection of personal information under its control.

For FINTRAC to achieve its mandate, regulated entities must implement the legislated requirements and set out specific measures in their compliance programs, including verifying the identity of clients, keeping records, and submitting reports to FINTRAC.

What is the new requirement?

FINTRAC requires merchants to provide the name and address of the beneficiary for each electronic funds transfer (EFT) that they submit for processing of $1,000 or more.

While the regulation requires this information for transactions of $1,000 or more, we highly recommend that you send it for all EFT transactions.

Who is this requirement applicable to?

This requirement is applicable to all FINTRAC registered entities (banks, acquirers, processors, merchants) that process EFT transactions.

Any merchant that is processing EFT transactions of more than $1,000 to a beneficiary - individuals or vendors.

For example: 

•  Payroll
•  Expense reimbursement
•  Invoice payment to a vendor

How long will data be retained for?

FINTRAC requires that the data be retained for a minimum of 5 years.

What if we don’t comply?

FINTRAC’s mandate is to facilitate the detection, prevention and deterrence of money laundering and the financing of terrorist activities, while ensuring the protection of personal information under its control.

Failure to comply with FINTRAC’s regulations may result in delayed or rejected EFTs, or suspension of your merchant account. Should an audit from FINTRAC take place while you are still implementing the additional requirements, you will have 10 business days to provide the requested information.

How can I provide this information?

There are two ways for you to supply this information for your EFTs.

Option #1: Submitting a separate CSV file through the file sharing service, files.com

Option #2 Using SFTP

You can find more information on these methods below.

File Sharing through Files.com

Transferring through SFTP