Send us a textYour money moves in seconds—until it doesn’t. We unpack the paradox at the heart of neobanking: the very speed and elegance that win customers can also create cover for illicit flows, trigger frozen transfers, and draw record fines when compliance trails growth. With real examples from Revolut, bunq, Starling, Monzo, N26, and Block’s Cash App, we trace how aggressive scaling, thin compliance teams, and brittle tooling converge into a trust problem users feel the moment a large transfer stalls.We break down the numbers and the stakes. Estimates suggest up to $750 billion in illicit funds wash through the EU financial system each year, around 2.3% of GDP. Regulators see firms prioritizing growth over controls, which leads to late suspicious activity reports and missed red flags. The result? Costly penalties and a scramble to retrofit scalable anti-money laundering systems. We highlight four recurring leadership failures—underinvestment in people and tech, weak risk systems, cultures that sideline financial crime prevention, and poor management information—that turn hypergrowth into a liability.This is also an AI story. Criminals now use machine learning and deepfakes to pass remote KYC and automate money laundering at speed, forcing banks into an AI-versus-AI defense. We discuss RegTech that can continuously monitor transactions, build dynamic risk profiles, and surface anomalies in real time—freeing human analysts to pursue complex cases. On the policy front, we examine the EU’s new anti-money laundering authority and the reality of its 2028 enforcement start date, a gap that sustains regulatory fragmentation and arbitrage. We close by challenging a broader blind spot: while digital banks absorb enforcement heat, vast sums still move through lightly supervised sectors like real estate and shell companies.If you care about trust, transparency, and the future of digital finance, this conversation offers a clear roadmap: treat compliance as core infrastructure, publish measurable results, and push for true cross-border harmonization. Enjoy the episode and, if it resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review telling us where you think the biggest blind spot remains. Join Allen and Ida as they dive deep into the world of tech, unpacking the latest trends, innovations, and disruptions in an engaging, thought-provoking conversationLeave your thoughts in the comments and subscribe for more tech updates and reviews.

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