Combating the Financing of Terrorism
Regulatory requirements aimed at preventing funds from reaching terrorist activity, commonly paired with AML rules.
Combating the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) refers to laws, regulations, and platform practices aimed at preventing funds from being raised, moved, or used to support terrorist activity. Some jurisdictions instead write this as CTF (Countering the Financing of Terrorism) — both abbreviations refer to the same set of obligations.
CFT requirements are almost always referenced alongside Anti-Money Laundering (AML) rules (see Kaavon's "Anti-Money Laundering" glossary definition), since both rely on similar tools — monitoring transactions and verifying identity — even though they target different underlying harms. Many national crypto regulators and central banks describe their licensing or supervisory authority over virtual asset service providers (see Kaavon's "Virtual Asset Service Provider" glossary definition) as covering "AML/CFT" (or "AML/CTF") together, as a single combined compliance category.
Examples
- A central bank's crypto exchange licensing regime might require ongoing AML/CFT compliance as a condition of maintaining the license.
- A regulator's public statement that it has no crypto-specific rules often still notes that general AML/CFT supervision continues to apply to crypto businesses.