Tuesday, October 18, 2011
FinCEN said CMIRs must be filed to report the international transportation, mail, or shipment of currency or other monetary instruments, such as coins, checks, traveler's checks, promissory notes, money orders and bearers of bonds that, in aggregate, exceed $10,000.
FinCEN recently updated anti-money laundering regulations to include prepaid cards among those monetary instruments. As part of its efforts, FinCEN reclassified prepaid cards as devices of "prepaid access."
"Reporting tangible prepaid access devices puts another tool at the disposal of law enforcement to interrupt the transfer of monetary value anonymously across international borders when that value was obtained illegally," said FinCEN Director James H. Freis Jr.
Passage of the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 required the updating of the Bank Secrecy Act to take into account prepaid and stored-value cards – products that were not in existence when the BSA was passed in 1970. 
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