Policy Update - November #1

Screen scraping submission 

FinTech Australia has made its submission to Treasury's consultation on the policy and regulatory implications of screen scraping.

Thank you to the dozens of members who contributed to developing our submission over the last month. 

You can visit our Policy page to see the final submission.

Follow-up consultation on Digital ID

Following the recent consultation on Digital ID legislation, the Department of Finance is seeking further industry feedback on two specific issues:

• Small businesses joining the government system - a principle of the framework is that alternatives to Digital ID should be maintained and some feedback indicates small businesses may not be interested in maintaining multiple identification channels.

• Regulatory blockages to the adoption of Digital ID by small businesses - i.e. are there legal requirements blocking small business adoption and could Digital ID be used to reduce regulatory burdens?

AUSTRAC increasing penalties for failure to enrol

The AML/CTF Act 2006 has recently been amended to clarify how penalty units accrue for unenrolled businesses. 

Now if a business has provided a 'designated service' (e.g. Financial Services, Trading Bullion, or Gambling Service) for 28 days and failed to enroll with AUSTRAC, it is liable to accrue daily penalties from the 9th of November 2023. These will accrue until the businesses enrols or stops providing such designated services. 

For each day unenrolled it may be liable for up to 12 penalty units with each penalty unit equaling currently $313, or up to 60 penalty units for bodies corporates.