e-gold scheduled downtime for 1.5 hours on 15 June 2009
Please note that the e-gold website will be offline as described below. Times provided are estimates only - actual downtime duration may be slightly shorter or longer.
e-gold downtime for 1 hour on 30 Apr 2009
Please note that the e-gold website will be offline as described below. Times provided are estimates only - actual downtime duration may be slightly shorter or longer.
e-gold downtime for 2 hours on 15 Apr 2009
Please note that the e-gold website will be offline as described below. Times provided are estimates only - actual downtime duration may be slightly shorter or longer.
Please note that the e-gold website will be offline as described below. Times provided are estimates only - actual downtime duration may be slightly shorter or longer.
Please note that the e-gold website will be offline as described below. Times provided are estimates only - actual downtime duration may be slightly shorter or longer.
Since my last post of October 19 announcing deployment of e-gold's document upload interface, numerous e-gold Users have uploaded the required documents for verifying identity and residential address. So far, however, many of you will have noticed that your accounts continue to display the message:
"Account Status: Spend Access Restricted"
and that no Spend transactions have occurred system-wide during the entire interval since that software release. There are several reasons for the delay, and each of them in turn introduces new complexities I will elaborate. The good news, jumping ahead, is that we anticipate re-opening for Spend activity, on a limited basis, within a day or two.
State licensing requirements
e-gold has approached every US state, and the District of Columbia, with either a license application or a letter requesting a determination as to whether a license is required in that state. Several states have indicated that e-gold should prevent customers from their state from using the system until a determination is made or a license granted. This meant that we had to implement programmatic modifications to selectively restrict access to Spend capabilities on a state-by-state basis. That part is done and deployed but the additional development task introduced some delay.
AML controls based on geographic (country) risk
In the past, there was a geographic pattern to criminal abuse of the e-gold system with Users from particular countries showing a much higher statistical tendency to engage in such activities. We have decided to limit this geographic risk by the temporary, and somewhat crude, means of country-specific throughput limits. Throughput limits themselves are not crude, and in fact will evolve into a cornerstone of the more refined Customer Due Diligence and risk-based Transaction Monitoring capabilities e-gold is urgently continuing to develop. The crudeness lies in their application, again temporarily, to entire countries. You will note that several countries have a zero throughput limit, that is, a complete prohibition of receiving or making Spends. We regret this and are working on the system enhancements that will enable us to reinstate usage privileges. Meanwhile, e-gold Users from these locations are encouraged to go ahead and provision their accounts, and watch for the system improvements that will support restoration of service.
Non-documentary verification
US laws and regulations governing financial institutions call for Customer Identification Programs that may involve documentary and/or non-documentary means of verification. "Documentary" means, well, looking at documents. Document upload and review is now a universal requirement for e-gold Users.
"Non-documentary" means checking individual identifiers for internal consistency - name, address, date of birth, government issued identifying number - against an external database. Initially, we were planning to use a vendor for this element of identity verification for US Users of e-gold. The vendors that provide such verification services obviously must themselves perform rigorous due diligence on their customers. Currently, e-gold is still working through that process with the vendor it hopes to use. If we had this capability for US Users of e-gold we could afford them a higher level of transaction privileges, i.e., a higher monthly throughput limit. Until we have that in place though, we are limiting US Users to the same throughput limits as Users from other OECD countries.
We plan to also implement Postal Validation as soon as possible. That enhancement to Customer Identification will support higher throughput limits for postally validated accounts, hopefully including accounts in the higher risk countries.
Disruption of exchange
A yet unsolved problem is resumption of liquid and competitive exchange markets. I will be posting additional thoughts on that topic shortly. To briefly preview, e-gold will be promulgating requirements for the regulation of exchange services, which will include a combination of government licensing requirements plus e-gold's own Enhanced Due Diligence for exchangers.
Please note that the e-gold website will be offline as described below. Times provided are estimates only - actual downtime duration may be slightly shorter or longer.
e-gold Ltd. is pleased to announce the deployment of the next phase of its enhanced Customer Identification Program (CIP). All e-gold account Users are now required to submit documentation of identity and residential address. Each User must provide a Government issued photo ID and a second document, such as a utility bill, showing the address they supplied as part of their Point of Contact information. Images of the required documents can be electronically uploaded to the e-gold website. Document review will occur as rapidly as possible and we continue to ask for the patience of our customers, especially initially, as Customer Service staff works through the avalanche of data from existing e-gold Users.
As part of the e-gold Account provisioning process, e-gold now uniformly obtains the four essential identifying elements for a compliant CIP: the User's name, address, date-of-birth, and a government-issued personal identifying number such as a tax ID number. This latest system enhancement supports e-gold's ability to verify this data by either (or both) documentary or(/and) non-documentary means, and represents a significant milestone toward e-gold attaining full compliance with all applicable U.S. laws and regulatory requirements. Of equal significance, e-gold's robust CIP and impending Due Diligence procedures will aid in making e-gold a more secure environment for global eCommerce.
As previously noted, Users located in selected jurisdictions may also experience additional service disruptions as licensing issues are sorted out or, in the case of countries identified as posing an increased risk of online criminal activity, until additional systematic risk-based Customer Due Diligence (CDD) and Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD) measures can be implemented.
e-gold Ltd. remains highly committed to offering a cost effective Internet payment system affording instantaneous settlement, free of chargeback risk, to customers around the world. We continue to be confident that a regulated e-gold rebuilt to a more systematic specification will be less hospitable to criminals, and more attractive to mainstream business use without being less accessible to those disregarded by legacy payment systems.
e-gold Ltd. is continuing to develop and deploy urgently needed system enhancements in order to achieve compliance with applicable U.S. laws and regulatory requirements. e-gold has registered with FinCEN as a money transmitting business, and is working with various U.S. state authorities to obtain licensing as a money transmitting business where required.
Licensing requirements vary from state to state and country by country. As e-gold completes this process, it is possible that Users residing in some jurisdictions may experience service disruption. We ask for your patience, and assure you we are working diligently to complete this sometimes complex process of licensing as soon as possible.
Another major focus of our efforts is a robust Customer Identification Program (CIP).
As a step towards improved customer identification, e-gold is requiring all Users to update their Point of Contact Information to a consistent format, in addition to providing their Date-of-Birth and Personal Tax Identification number. This improved quality of identifying information is being obtained in preparation for the next-stage CIP, which will include the collection of electronic images of documents to verify identity and residential address. This enhanced capability, supporting both documentary and non-documentary mechanisms of identity verification, will be implemented in the very near future.
e-gold Ltd. remains highly committed to offering a cost effective Internet payment system affording instantaneous settlement, free of chargeback risk, to customers around the world. We continue to be confident that a regulated e-gold rebuilt to a more systematic specification will be less hospitable to criminals, and more attractive to mainstream business use without being less accessible to those disregarded by legacy payment systems.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
[MELBOURNE, FL] -- e-gold Ltd. announced today that it has retained KPMG LLP to assist e-gold Ltd. in its development of an improved Anti-Money Laundering Program. KPMG’s Advisory Services practice brings significant industry knowledge and experience that will greatly benefit e-gold Ltd., e-gold Ltd. announced.
Dr. Douglas Jackson, e-gold Ltd. Founder, said, “e-gold Ltd. is seeking to have one of the market’s most effective Anti-Money Laundering Programs.” Dr. Jackson said e-gold Ltd.'s goal is to implement significant enhancements to its Anti-Money Laundering Program in the next 30-60 days.
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e-gold is an electronic currency, 100% backed by physical gold in allocated storage that empowers people to use gold as money. e-gold is integrated into a secure account-based payment system, operating globally 24/7, featuring instantaneous payment settlement with no charge back risk, at lower cost. Shopping cart, automation, and mobile phone interfaces are available. Operational since 1996, e-gold has settled over 90M transactions, serves customers in 165 countries, and has a circulation of over 2.2 metric tonnes of e-gold.
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For information contact:
Bill Cunningham
bcunningham@g-sr.com
+1 (321) 956-1200 ext 127
Or visit www.e-gold.com.
