Bottle Pay, a UK company, “on a mission…to introduce Bitcoin to 1 billion people in the next 5 years,” has announced it will shut down December 31st because it does not want to impose enhanced anti-money laundering procedures on users.
According to a company blog post:
“The amount and type of extra personal information we would be required to collect from our users would alter the current user experience so radically, and so negatively, that we are not willing to force this onto our community.”
Bottle Pay has been variously described as a “custodial bitcoin wallet provider,” a “payments startup” and a “social media bitcoin tipping service.”
As a UK-based transmitter of bitcoins, Bottle Pay says it will have to comply with new “5AMLD” EU regulation coming into effect on January 10th, 2020.
In order to “maintain our integrity” and “protect the interests of our team, investors and users,” however, the company, has, “taken the painful decision to shut Bottle Pay down completely rather than become subject to these new regulations.”
Finance Magnates reports that Bottle Pay only launched in June of this year.
This was around the same time the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a powerful global anti-money laundering oversight body, issued comprehensive directives obliging its member nations to regulate “virtual asset service providers” and ensure traceability of transactions exceeding $5000.
As well, only three months ago, parent firm Block Matrix announced it had raised $2 million in a seed funding round for Bottle Pay. The company’s shut down announcement does not indicate whether seed investors will be remunerated. CI Contacted the company and they informed us:
“…the investors fully back our decision and we will be refocusing the business into another product that has always been part of our plan.”
When we asked whether Bottle Pay will be paying back seed investors, an unnamed individual from “Bottle Support” responded:
“(T)he investors fully back our decision and we will be refocusing the business into another product that (sic) has always been part of our plan.”
According to the company:
“The shutdown of Bottle Pay will take the following form
- New sign ups and deposits to wallets go offline with immediate effect at the time of this announcement (16:00 GMT on Friday 13th December);
- Our bots on Twitter, Reddit, Telegram and Discord have also been taken offline with immediate effect. Funds which have already been sent using them will not be claimed and will be returned to the sender as usual within 7 days.
- Withdrawal function taken offline, and all wallets closed, at 13:00 GMT on Tuesday 31st December.
- Funds remaining in wallets after shut down will be collected and donated to The Human Rights Foundation.”