Payments
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March 21, 2025
Consumers in some regions will soon have cash withdrawals at money service businesses tracked. The US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Network will mandate certain border regions near Mexico to report cash deposits and withdrawals of $200 or more, according to a report by Economic Times.
This is part of an effort to combat illegal activities, such as money laundering and drug cartel operations. This is a large decrease from the previous threshold of $10,000 at ATMs.
The seven areas included are San Diego and Imperial Counties in California along with Cameron, Hidalgo, Maverick and Webb Counties in Texas. With the regulation, check cashing outlets and money exchanges will have to file a Currency Transaction Report. These reports include private consumer information such as a Social Security number.
Privacy advocacy groups argue that this will wrongly impact Americans by exposing them to financial monitoring.
There is some question of whether this will impact ATMs.
“The March 11 FinCEN Southwest Border Geographic Targeting Order seems to be a bit of overkill. The number of $200 and more, in person cash transactions has to be in the millions annually. Issuing a CTR for every one of those, regardless of the circumstances, is going be an enormous burden on banks and MSBs. I certainly understand the rationale, but it seems that there must be a more efficient way to gather the information they are looking for,” David Tente, executive director of ATMIA, said in an email statement.
“The FinCEN order makes no mention of ATMs. And most independent ATM operators are not MSBs — which would appear to mean, that they are not subject to this order.”
