Anti-money-laundering

Anti-money-laundering — AML — is the legal regime that requires regulated firms to know who their customers are, watch how money moves, and report anything suspicious. KYC is the part you see at sign-up; AML is the wider obligation that makes KYC mandatory in the first place.

Why it matters: every card on this site is issued by a regulated entity, and AML rules are why that entity asks for your ID, where it gets the power to freeze an account, and why it can ask for more documents later. Regulators fine issuers hard when AML controls fall short, and those failures land on cardholders as freezes, delays, and re-verification. Even a self-custodial card, where the funds are yours, runs on top of an issuer bound by these rules.

For example: Coinbase, which issues a Visa debit card against your account balance, settled with the New York Department of Financial Services in January 2023 — a $50 million penalty plus $50 million committed to fixes, with an appointed monitor — over AML and KYC failures in onboarding and transaction monitoring. As of June 2026.