Wire Transfers
Banks use wire transfers as an expeditious method for transferring funds between bank accounts. Wire transfers include transactions occurring within the national boundaries of a country or from one country to another. As it do not involve actual movement of currency, they are considered as a rapid and secure method for transferring value from one location to another.
The salient features of a wire transfer transaction are as under:
- Wire transfer is a transaction carried out on behalf of an originator person (both natural and legal) through a bank by electronic means with a view to making an amount of money available to a beneficiary person at a bank. The originator and the beneficiary may be the same person.
- Cross-border transfer means any wire transfer where the originator and the beneficiary bank or financial institutions are located in different countries. It may include any chain of wire transfers that has at least one cross-border element.
- Domestic wire transfer means any wire transfer where the originator and receiver are located in the same country. It may also include a chain of wire transfers that takes place entirely within the borders of a single country even though the system used to affect the wire transfer may be located in another country.
- The originator is the account holder, or where there is no account, the person (natural or legal) that places the order with the bank to perform the wire transfer.
It is an instantaneous and most preferred route for the transfer of funds across the globe and hence, there is a need for preventing terrorists and other criminals from having unfettered access to wire transfers for moving their funds and for detecting any misuse when it occurs. This can be achieved if basic information on the originator of wire transfers is immediately available to appropriate law enforcement and/or prosecutorial authorities in order to assist them in detecting, investigating, prosecuting terrorists or other criminals and tracing their assets.
The information can be used by the Financial Intelligence Unit – India (FIU-IND) for analyzing suspicious or unusual activity and disseminating it as necessary. The originator information can also be put to use by the beneficiary bank to facilitate the identification and reporting of suspicious transactions to FIU-IND. Owing to the potential terrorist financing threat posed by small wire transfers, the objective is to be in a position to trace all wire transfers with minimum threshold limits.
