FinCEN Travel Rule Proposal Withdrawn: The $3,000 Threshold Stays

FinCEN and the Federal Reserve Board are withdrawing their October 2020 joint proposal, published at 85 FR 68005, to cut the threshold in the funds transfer recordkeeping rule and the FinCEN travel rule from $3,000 to $250 for transfers that begin or end outside the United States. FinCEN announced the step on 6 November 2026. The withdrawal notice, FR Doc. 2026-22809, is scheduled for Federal Register publication on 9 November 2026 and takes effect as of that date. The same proposal would also have written convertible virtual currency (CVC) and digital assets with legal tender status into the rules’ definitions.

For banks and covered nonbank financial institutions, including money services businesses (MSBs) and CVC money transmitters, the withdrawal itself does not change existing recordkeeping or travel-rule obligations: the $3,000 thresholds in 31 CFR 1020.410(a), 1010.410(e) and 1010.410(f) are unchanged, and the agencies state that they will not take further action on the proposal. For planning purposes, the withdrawal ends the proposed $250 cross-border amendment. CVC-related obligations continue under the existing recordkeeping and travel-rule provisions, including 31 CFR 1010.410(e) and (f), as interpreted in FinCEN’s FIN-2019-G001 guidance. Separate amendments concerning permitted payment stablecoin issuers remain proposed under the April 2026 rulemaking.

Related reading: FinCEN CVC Mixing Withdrawal: Mixer and Wallet Proposals Dropped

Dates in the FinCEN travel rule withdrawal

• 27 October 2020: joint proposal published at 85 FR 68005 (RIN 1506-AB41); comments closed on 27 November 2020.
• 10 April 2026: a footnote in FinCEN and OFAC’s proposed rule for permitted payment stablecoin issuers (91 FR 18582) says FinCEN intends to withdraw the 2020 proposal.
• 6 October 2026: FinCEN’s withdrawals of its 2020 unhosted wallet proposal and 2023 CVC mixing proposal are published.
• 6 November 2026: FinCEN announces the withdrawal; the notice is filed for public inspection.
• 9 November 2026: scheduled Federal Register publication, and the date the withdrawal applies.

Three changes the 2020 proposal would have made

The proposal bundled three amendments, and they did not all belong to the same agency. Under the recordkeeping rule, which the Board and FinCEN issue jointly, institutions would have collected and retained information on cross-border funds transfers and transmittals of funds from $250 instead of $3,000. FinCEN alone proposed the same cut for the travel rule, the duty to pass that information to the next institution in the payment chain. Both agencies proposed revising the definitions of “payment order” and “transmittal order” so that both rules would expressly cover domestic and cross-border transactions in CVC or in any digital asset with legal tender status.

The proposed $250 threshold was limited to transfers that begin or end outside the United States. A transfer would have counted as beginning or ending outside the United States only if the institution knew or had reason to know that a party was located in, ordinarily resident in, or organized under the laws of a non-US jurisdiction. The proposal confined “reason to know” to information in the transmittal order, information collected to effect the transfer, or information collected to comply with other BSA rules. Domestic-only transfers would have stayed at $3,000.

The 2020 notice also cited FATF Recommendation 16, noting that FATF allows a de minimis threshold for cross-border wire transfers of no higher than USD/EUR 1,000. FinCEN rejected that level, stating that $1,000 would exclude over 88 percent of the transactions in its dataset of potentially terrorism-linked transmittals drawn from money transmitter SARs. Our note on FATF travel rule implementation for VASPs covers how other jurisdictions apply the standard.

The $3,000 obligations that keep running

Banks keep records for each funds transfer of $3,000 or more under 31 CFR 1020.410(a), from the originator’s name, address and payment instructions when acting as originator’s bank to a copy of the payment order when acting as intermediary or beneficiary’s bank. Nonbank financial institutions, MSBs included, carry the parallel duty for transmittals of funds of $3,000 or more under 1010.410(e). The travel rule in 1010.410(f) requires a transmittor’s or intermediary financial institution located within the United States to include specified information in the transmittal order for any transmittal of $3,000 or more. Neither rule distinguishes domestic from cross-border transfers.

The withdrawal notice treats the two obligations separately, and so does the citation trail. Regulation S distinguishes the agencies’ recordkeeping authority by institution and transaction type. Under 12 CFR 219.23(a), the Board’s incorporated requirements concern domestic and international funds transfers by insured depository institutions; under paragraph (b), they concern international transmittals by other financial institutions. FinCEN’s 31 CFR 1010.410(e) also applies to covered domestic nonbank transmittals.

The travel rule is FinCEN’s alone and applies to banks and nonbanks. A control inventory that files all three CFR citations under one “travel rule” heading hides that split, which matters when each control has to be traced to the agency rule it satisfies.

The exceptions are unchanged too. Transfers where both parties fall into the listed categories in 1010.410(e)(6) or 1020.410(a)(6), such as a transfer between two banks or between a bank and a broker-dealer, sit outside the recordkeeping rule, and 1010.410(f)(4) applies the same list to the travel rule.

Why FinCEN and the Board pulled the proposal

The agencies received nearly 3,000 comments, a significant majority of them substantially similar form letters. Commenters argued that $250 would burden smaller institutions in particular, would disrupt consumer remittances and could push senders into less regulated channels, and would increase the liability exposure that comes with holding personally identifiable information. Many noted that some potentially illicit transfers below $3,000 already reach FinCEN through suspicious activity reports (SARs). On CVC, sentiment was mixed: CVC service providers generally opposed the change, citing technological limits and the lack of an international messaging standard for CVC transactions, while some depository institutions and MSBs supported it.

The notice gives two reasons for withdrawing. More than five years have passed, and the agencies want further public feedback before adopting anything similar; the withdrawal is meant to give certainty that no final rule will issue without a new opportunity to comment. The CVC market has also changed since 2020, and the notice cites the GENIUS Act, enacted on 18 July 2025, as an example of the new legal frameworks against which any future CVC amendment to these rules should be judged.

CVC and stablecoin transfers after the withdrawal

CVC stays within the travel rule under the existing provisions, as FinCEN has interpreted them since 2019. Its guidance FIN-2019-G001 states that because a transmittal order involving CVC is an instruction to pay a determinable amount of money, CVC transactions qualify as transmittals of funds and may fall within the travel rule, where a transmittal of $3,000 or more, or its CVC equivalent, may trigger requirements for a money transmitter acting as the transmittor’s, intermediary or recipient’s institution. Where the transmission protocol cannot carry the required information, the guidance allows a separate message, sent before or at the time of the transmittal of value.

The 2020 proposal described its CVC amendment as codifying FinCEN’s existing expectation. The withdrawal notice does not mention the 2019 guidance, and FinCEN’s guidance page still listed FIN-2019-G001 with no rescission or modification note when checked on 7 November 2026. My reading, which is interpretation and not FinCEN text: for a CVC money transmitter, the travel rule position after 9 November is the position before it, meaning the existing definitions as FinCEN reads them in the 2019 guidance, at $3,000. What has gone is the prospect of that reading being written into the regulation through this docket, together with the $250 cross-border trigger.

Payment stablecoins have their own track. The April 2026 FinCEN and OFAC proposed rule implementing the GENIUS Act for permitted payment stablecoin issuers (91 FR 18582) would bring those issuers expressly within the recordkeeping and travel-rule framework and amend the definition of transmittal order in 31 CFR 1010.100(eee) to name payment stablecoins. It would also amend the institutional exceptions in 31 CFR 1010.410(e)(6) to include permitted payment stablecoin issuers, so eligible transfers between entities in the specified categories would remain exempt.

FinCEN states that it is not otherwise proposing to change those rules substantively, and that the amendment should not be read, by negative inference, to suggest that orders to pay other kinds of value that substitute for currency are not transmittal orders. As proposed text, it changes nothing until FinCEN adopts it in a final rule. For the same issuers’ prudential returns, see OCC PS-01 and PS-02 reporting under the GENIUS Act.

Change-log clean-up for banks, MSBs and crypto firms

Items opened against 85 FR 68005 can now be closed or re-labelled: a $250 cross-border trigger, a “reason to know” location flag built for the proposal, or a CVC definitions change. FR Doc. 2026-22809, filed for public inspection on 6 November 2026 and scheduled for Federal Register publication on 9 November 2026, provides the reference for closing those proposal-related items once the withdrawal takes effect upon publication. The $3,000 recordkeeping and travel rule controls stay, and CVC travel rule processes built on the existing provisions and FIN-2019-G001 stay as they are.

Policies, procedures and risk assessments that describe the 2020 proposal as pending need an edit. Our October note on the CVC mixing and unhosted wallet withdrawals listed 85 FR 68005 as formally pending at that point; that item is now closed. For groups with one counterparty-data stack across US and non-US entities, the US withdrawal leaves FATF Recommendation 16 work untouched; see our piece on the FATF travel rule consultation for EU payment firms and CASPs.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does a transfer below $3,000 now fall outside BSA reporting altogether?

No. The withdrawal concerns only the recordkeeping and travel rule thresholds. Suspicious activity reporting has separate thresholds. Banks generally must report suspicious transactions involving or aggregating at least $5,000 under 31 CFR 1020.320(a).

MSBs covered by 31 CFR 1022.320(a)(1) generally must report suspicious transactions involving or aggregating at least $2,000 under paragraph (a)(2). However, paragraph (a)(3) sets a $5,000 mandatory reporting threshold for issuers of money orders or traveller’s cheques where the reportable activity is identified through clearance or similar records. FinCEN’s alerts restate that institutions may report suspicious transactions regardless of amount and still rely on the safe harbor.

Could the $3,000 threshold go up instead, as some commenters asked?

Several commenters argued for a higher threshold because of inflation since the rule was adopted in 1995. The notice records the argument without acting on it, so the threshold stays at $3,000. A change in either direction would need a new proposal, and the agencies have tied this withdrawal to giving the public a fresh chance to comment before any similar amendment.

Related Articles

• FinCEN CVC Mixing Withdrawal: Mixer and Wallet Proposals Dropped: the October 2026 mixer and unhosted wallet withdrawals.
• FATF Travel Rule Implementation: The Enforcement Gap: FATF’s July 2026 update on travel rule laws and enforcement for VASPs.
• FATF Travel Rule Consultation: What EU Payment Firms and CASPs Should Consider: FATF’s consultation on implementation guidance for the revised Recommendation 16.
• OCC PS-01 and PS-02 Reporting: Weekly Reserves, Quarterly Condition: the OCC’s GENIUS Act reports for stablecoin issuers.

Key Takeaways

• Retire test cases, rule parameters and vendor requirements keyed to a $250 cross-border trigger.
• Before removing location-flag logic built for the 2020 “reason to know” test, check whether other controls, such as transaction monitoring, now draw on it.
• Leave CVC travel rule messaging in place under the existing provisions, as FIN-2019-G001 explains them.
• Payment stablecoin issuers: track the GENIUS Act AML rulemaking started at 91 FR 18582 for the express transmittal order amendment, which binds no one until adopted in a final rule.

Sources and References

• FinCEN, press release on the withdrawal (6 November 2026): fincen.gov
• FinCEN and Federal Reserve Board, withdrawal of 85 FR 68005, FR Doc. 2026-22809, RIN 1506-AB41 (filed 6 November 2026; publication 9 November 2026): public inspection PDF; Federal Register
• Board and FinCEN, joint notice of proposed rulemaking, 85 FR 68005 (27 October 2020): govinfo
• 31 CFR Part 1010 (including 1010.410(e) and (f)), 2025 edition: govinfo
• 31 CFR Part 1020 (including 1020.320 and 1020.410(a)), 2025 edition: govinfo
• 31 CFR Part 1022 (including 1022.320), 2025 edition: govinfo
• Board, Regulation S, 12 CFR 219.23, Recordkeeping and reporting requirements, 2026 edition: govinfo
• FinCEN, FIN-2019-G001, guidance on CVC business models (9 May 2019): guidance page; PDF
• FinCEN and OFAC, permitted payment stablecoin issuer AML/CFT and sanctions program requirements, joint proposed rule, 91 FR 18582 (10 April 2026): govinfo PDF
• FinCEN, withdrawal of the unhosted wallet proposal (85 FR 83840), FR Doc. 2026-20430 (6 October 2026): public inspection PDF
• FinCEN, withdrawal of the CVC mixing special measure proposal (88 FR 72701), FR Doc. 2026-20429 (6 October 2026): public inspection PDF
• FinCEN, FIN-2026-Alert009 (30 October 2026), SAR safe harbor reminder: PDF
• White House, “Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology” (July 2025), p. 100, as cited in FR Doc. 2026-22809: PDF

Closing the 85 FR 68005 file on 9 November 2026

The withdrawal leaves the existing recordkeeping and travel-rule thresholds at $3,000. Covered CVC transfers remain subject to the applicable CFR provisions, as interpreted in FIN-2019-G001. What remains is file work: record FR Doc. 2026-22809 and its 9 November 2026 scheduled publication date against every open change-log entry, policy reference and project ticket that still cites 85 FR 68005 or RIN 1506-AB41.

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