The Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) is the foundational US anti-money-laundering law (1970, expanded by the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001) that requires financial institution…
Join the waitlistThe BSA is administered by FinCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network), a bureau of the US Treasury. It applies to banks, credit unions, securities firms, casinos, and money services businesses (MSBs) — which includes most US fintechs.
Key BSA obligations: register as an MSB with FinCEN if you transmit funds; maintain a written AML/CFT compliance program; designate a BSA officer; identify and verify customers (CIP); conduct ongoing customer due diligence (CDD); file Currency Transaction Reports (CTRs) for cash transactions over ,000; file Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) within 30 days of detecting suspicious activity; retain records for at least 5 years; respond to FinCEN 314(a) information-sharing requests.
Penalties for BSA violations range from civil fines (up to K per violation) to criminal penalties (up to K and 10 years imprisonment for willful violations) to loss of charter or licensure.
Kronos operates under the BSA via its licensed partner our banking partner.xyz, which holds FinCEN MSB registration and state money transmitter licenses (MTLs) covering all 50 US states where Kronos is offered. Our money-services partners handle CTR/SAR filing, OFAC screening, and FinCEN information-sharing requests. Kronos contributes the application-layer signal (device, behavior, transaction context) that feeds into our partner's monitoring stack.
BSA Customer Identification Program rules require collecting name, date of birth, address, and a government identifier (SSN for US persons) before opening an account. Your SSN is sent directly to Plaid for verification and is never stored in cleartext in Kronos databases.
Kronos does not file 1099s directly. Per BSA, transactions over $10,000 in cash trigger a CTR filing by our money-services partner. Crypto trades may trigger 1099-B reporting starting tax year 2026 under IRS Form 1099-DA — this is handled by our exchange partner as the broker of record.
Whatever you authorise during the Link flow — typically account balance, account/routing number, and transaction history for the linked accounts.