Washington has dropped a five-year-old plan to cut the US Travel Rule threshold from $3,000 to $250. The Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and the Federal Reserve Board withdrew the 2020 proposal, which covered transfers that start or end outside the United States. FinCEN announced it on November 6. The withdrawal became official on November 9, 2026, the day the notice ran in the Federal Register.
The Travel Rule makes banks and money services businesses collect, keep and pass along details about who sends a funds transfer and who receives it. In the US it covers transmittals of $3,000 or more, and FinCEN’s 2019 guidance says a transfer of $3,000 “or its equivalent in CVC,” meaning convertible virtual currency, can trigger it. That line now stays where it is.
What the 2020 proposal would have done
The proposal, published on October 27, 2020, would have lowered two thresholds to $250 for international transfers: the one for collecting and keeping the records, and the one for transmitting them to the next institution in the payment chain. There was a crypto part, too: the text would have made clear that the rules cover convertible virtual currency and digital assets with legal tender status, at home and across borders.
Nearly 3,000 comments came in, and most were form letters, according to the withdrawal notice. A $250 line, many of them wrote, would weigh on smaller institutions, get in the way of remittances and could push people toward less regulated services. Some went the other way and asked for a higher threshold, since the current figure was set in 1995.
Crypto companies mostly opposed the virtual currency clarification, citing technical limits and the lack of an international messaging standard at the time, while some banks and money transmitters supported it.
Why the agencies pulled it now
The notice gives two reasons. More than five years have passed, and the agencies want new public feedback before adopting anything similar; withdrawing the text guarantees that “no final rule will be issued without an additional opportunity for public comment.” They also say the crypto market has changed, and point to the GENIUS Act, the federal stablecoin law enacted on July 18, 2025.
A second withdrawal in five weeks
FinCEN has now dropped two crypto proposals from late 2020 in five weeks. On October 6, 2026, it withdrew a plan from December 23, 2020. That one would have made banks and money services businesses report, keep records and verify customers for transactions with unhosted wallets, the kind of self-custody wallet a person controls with their own keys.
Where the line sits elsewhere
Of the four rulebooks below, the US keeps the highest threshold. The figures are the ones we read in the legal texts on November 8, 2026.
| Jurisdiction | Rule | When full sender and recipient data must travel |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 31 CFR 1010.410(f) | Transmittals of $3,000 or more, unchanged |
| European Union | Regulation (EU) 2023/1113, applied since December 30, 2024 | Every crypto transfer, with no minimum; an extra self-hosted wallet check above EUR 1,000 |
| United Kingdom | Money Laundering Regulations 2017, regulation 64C, since June 30, 2026 | Cross-border transfers of £800 or more |
| FATF | Recommendation 16 | Countries may set a threshold no higher than USD/EUR 1,000 |
At $3,000, the US figure stays above the USD 1,000 ceiling the FATF sets for cross-border wire transfers, while the EU applies its crypto rule to transfers of any size.
What changes for users
Nothing changes in practice. The requirements in force before November 9 remain in force, and the threshold for US institutions still starts at $3,000. The notice says the agencies will take no further action on the 2020 text, and any future attempt would come as a new proposal with its own comment period.
