In this episode of The Connector Podcast, host Koen Vanderhoydonk interviews Lukasz, Chief Product Officer of ChainComply, a fintech focused on anti‑money‑laundering (AML) solutions for crypto‑related financial institutions. Lukasz explains his three‑fold CPO role—client liaison, market scouting, and product roadmap creation—and describes the core problem: banks frequently block transfers originating from crypto exchanges due to source‑of‑funds opacity and regulatory fear of penalties. He outlines how the new European MiCA regulation and the European Banking Authority (EBA) guidance compel banks to assess crypto risks, update procedures, acquire proper technology, and train staff. ChainComply’s technology stack is deliberately simple—built on .NET and React—and integrates with established blockchain‑forensic providers such as Chainalysis to deliver curated, compliance‑ready data. The solution targets banks, private banks, and exchanges, with a view toward serving Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) once they mature. Lukasz discusses the broader global compliance landscape, emphasizing the emerging partnership between banks and Crypto Asset Service Providers (CASPs) and the supervisory role of banking regulators. He positions ChainComply as an enabler that digitizes data gathering, aggregation, augmentation, and reporting, culminating in audit‑ready PDF reports for regulators. The conversation closes with a forward‑looking vision where crypto moves beyond speculation to become a mainstream payment medium and a platform for trustless automation, and provides contact details (chaincomply.io, LinkedIn).
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Welcome to the Connector Podcast, an ongoing conversation connecting fintechs, banks, and regulators worldwide. Join CEO and founder Koen Vanderhoydonk as you learn more about the latest available trends and solutions in the markets.
Welcome to another podcast, and today I've got with me Lucas from ChainComply. Lukasz, tell us what you do and who you are.
My name is Lukasz and I'm, I'm a CPO, so product, chief product officer at ChainComply, which is a company that deals with anti-money laundering for traditional financial companies that are crypto-related.
I think for a CPO, this is a way too simple answer. Could you elaborate a little bit deeper what you do?
You mean as a CPO?
Yeah, as a Chief Product Officer.
Well, there's 3 things, I think, main 3 things. One is that I talk to clients a lot and I see what they want, what their expectations are regarding our product and what their user experience is. Second, I spend a lot of time looking at the market, so to see what our competition is doing, what are complementary solutions. And then as a consequence, I spend a lot of time with the IT team and I build the roadmaps for them and I create, let's say, the requirements and the dream that then it's getting built by the technical teams. So it's a really nice place to be.
Yeah, must be, must be. And can you explain a little bit more deeper what ChainComply is doing? A little level deeper if possible.
Yes. So, you know, we are operating in a space of crypto compliance. So you probably have seen the latest news this week about Bitcoin hitting the all-time highs. So there will be a lot of people who will get wealthy because of what's happening on the market.
Mm-hmm.
And that will create some kind of wealth that should be then exported to to buy a new car, right? To buy a new house. So you want to move this wealth to the bank. And currently it's not so easy. Banks are not so happy to accept money from crypto exchanges, and sometimes they just simply block the transfers.
Mm-hmm.
So this is the problem that we are solving. We, we basically make the crypto transferable to people's bank accounts.
And what would you say are the reasons then for a bank to refuse?
So there's certain things I don't really wonder why banks are refusing this transfer, because in many occasions the money is just coming from blockchain. So it looks like a very dark place. So source of funds is a big problem. How do you prove where did the money come from? But at the same time, there is a lot of just maybe bad rap about crypto because you can imagine that someone just bought some bitcoins on crypto exchange and sold it and didn't really go even on blockchain. This person is also blocked. So it's both partially, it's fear at the bank side about such money and then getting a huge penalty from, from the regulator when, when the supervisor will come and they will see that where some illicit money went into the bank, they would just get a huge penalty. So some of these fears are justified, some of them are not justified, but I would say also lack of proper solutions, processes, and knowledge about how to handle such transfers.
But then soon we'll have MiCA. Will that then basically change everything?
Partially. So, so there's a regulatory shift, right? This MiCA, there's travel rule, there's also some accompanying regulations. It's like a whole package. And indeed, the MiCA empowered and mandated European Banking Authority to issue guidances about how to proceed in such cases. And there were 4 things stated there. One thing, assess the new risks that crypto brings, update your procedures and processes, and then surprisingly, buy proper tech. So it's written by—
oh, it's written in the law.
Buy proper technology and do proper training to your people to understand how to read this technology and how to read the alerting systems that this technology brings. And this was issued both as a guidance to the banks and to the crypto exchanges themselves. And, and that's just like, like the starting point, but then it, it brings a lot of challenges. So, okay, the regulator says that we need to update, that it requires banks also to open up. But, but how do you actually do that? How do you deal with this complexity? How do you deal with the knowledge gap? How far do you need to train your people? Which process can you really do manually, which you can automate? So there's a lot of challenges, I think, still ahead of the banks to adapt to this new world.
I'd like to pick your brain a little bit on the third one, the technology part. What type of technology are we talking about and how does that actually comply with ChainComply?
So here I will probably surprise you. Our technology is not something, you know, rocket science. It's good old .NET and React. We just have typical development software that banks are even using. And we are a little bit maybe boring B2B enterprise software company in this way.
Which is not necessarily a bad thing, I think, by the way.
It's not necessary, and it's also a proof that crypto doesn't have to be that complex, right? You don't need to be a rocket scientist to play with this technology. At the same time, there's a lot of data providers that we use that provide some kind of quite spectacular technologies in terms of data extraction algorithms from blockchain. How do you decode certain things? So there is complexity, but Our job is to make it easy for the banks and build on the tools that already exist and build on the arms of the giants that already exist in the industry and just pick it up in the right quantity for the bank to have it simple.
What do you mean exactly with the giants in the industry? Because it came up very quickly for you, but what does it really mean? I'm sure the listeners would be interested too.
The crypto space is already decades old, right? So there's really big companies. For example, if we look at blockchain analysis tools, blockchain forensic tools, everybody heard about Chainalysis.
True.
These companies exist for many, many years and they've built a lot of expertise about what's happening on blockchain. They can trace the money very precisely. They can jump chains, jump blockchains. So if the money is from one blockchain to another, they could still continue to go there. They can even demix mixers, money mixers under certain conditions. So this is quite sophisticated tech and there's a lot of data about what happened on blockchain. And what I mean that we are building on the arms of the giants, we are integrating with those tools and never there's a case of our client that wants to withdraw the money from, from crypto exchange and provides the blockchain history to examine. We are using those tools to check for any, any risks or any signals that, that there was something illegal being done or something, some other risks were identified with that, with that accounts and that wallets. Yeah, so that's where we are complementary to tools that already exist. We try not to, you know, develop, redevelop hot water.
No, understood. So you operationalize the toolings that you have, which apparently go very deep, and you make it chunk sizes so that it's easier for the compliance people to deal with. Is that somehow right?
Yes, you could say this, this way. We only take the relevant data, the most relevant data for the compliance to make a decision quickly. And there's a lot of simplification and a lot of orchestration of different providers to make sure that, that we only get the data that, that is needed for the decision.
Well, earlier you talked about banks. You also mentioned exchanges, but are they like Any other regulated companies that could benefit from tools like yours?
Banks and exchanges, I would say private banks. These are the main players, I think, on the market.
Yes. But like the new players on the market, like the VASPs, the virtual asset service providers, that's not your cup of tea, right?
So here it's a bit strange situation that the WASPs are not really open. There's a little bit maybe of immaturity in terms of compliance still at WASPs. They have transitionary periods to comply with MiCA. And they already have a lot of tooling, but They are really about the user experience. And I would— so right now we have open discussions with dozens of banks. At the same, VASPs are not yet, let's say, moving fast enough in this area. So—
Okay.
I think VASPs could be our clients because imagine if someone is receiving, let's say, 10 Bitcoins, right? That's almost €1 million. in terms of your value. So you need to do enhanced due diligence, you need to do source of funds investigation on such a transfer if it comes from another exchange. But let's say that there will be some time needed for, for WASPs to join the, the, the EBA guidance, maybe.
Fair enough. We talk a lot about MiCA being a European legislation, but What is the global landscape and how do you actually function in that larger world of compliance rules?
Okay, so I think still the main tectonic shift will happen between the banks and CASPs because banks are required to acknowledge those new financial intermediaries which are CASPs, so crypto asset service providers, and to open up on transactions with them and to, but also to create some kind of defenses about the new risks that the CASPs are bringing. So again, we are going back to the EBA guidance. At the same time, crypto exchanges are supposed to mature in terms of compliance, client protection. And it somehow looks like this, like the regulator, the EU, invites those 2 institutional players to or institutional, institutional, um, types of, of companies to dance with each other and to dance within certain format, like, which is MiCA, because MiCA is really well regulated, right? They didn't leave any stone unturned. Like, like, you have things explained in detail. Nobody can say that it's not clear what, what's, what has to happen. Um, so those 2 players are invited to a dance, but it takes two to tango. So one have to mature and the custods cannot, and say custods need to mature and they cannot continue with this casino kind of experience that was happening right now. And banks, they have to open up and maybe open to new experiences, which is these new players. But ultimately, I think there will be a lot of dependence on banking supervisory bodies to make sure that this dance really happens and that's how fast it happens. So let's hope it's rather sooner than later. And ultimately, if, if the dance does happen, then we can quickly see that there will be much more than just the speculation element to crypto. that we mostly see, but we will see the payment use case, right? And, and if the payments are happening and, and people start transactioning on blockchain and actually pay to each other, which is for me still the mo— the biggest use case of crypto, although, although unfortunately still marginalized. Then we also will see the, the, the whole second premise, which is the automation, the, the full trustless automation where you could have services based on-chain and that people could actually start using. And that will be really a beautiful dance that let's hope that we will see because that's when the real party will start. But that will take some time to happen. So, and next.
Lukas, we're almost at the end of this podcast. It goes always very fast, especially when you have interesting topics. What do you see the role of ChainComply within those few future states that you just stated?
So we talk a lot about regulatory requirements and regulator states that, you know, you need to do this and you are required to do this. But when you read the regulation and if you read the guidance, the guidance is detailed, but okay, how do you do that? You cannot— the requirements are quite demanding because the risks are high. So understanding even what, what, what is possible and how could you structure the project process of source of funds investigation that is, that is clearly stated, uh, it's hard. And we are there to bring technological solutions on, um, that could be applied on a mass basis. And we are digitalizing the whole process. So we are digitalizing the data gathering, the the aggregation of data, the augmentation of data with external sources where you need to do all the checks. And then very important reporting. Our process ends up with a PDF report where, where in case of regulatory inspection, you could, you could see that you can prove that you did the right thing and that you were all the way when it comes to money laundering risk. So We see ourselves as enabler, as a, as, uh, as a way to, to basically interact with this new world and, uh, also to start a discussion with, with the new generation of, um, banking clients that are natively crypto holding. So we, we hope that we can, uh, help the space to, uh, grow faster and to innovate together and to bring solutions that could benefit everyone.
I think they call this ending with a blast. Maybe one more question. Where can people find you and how can they contact you?
So our website is chaincomply.io, but I invite everyone to contact me on LinkedIn. I'm very active there. So if there's any questions, if there's any way I could help, please don't hesitate.
Brilliant. Thank you very much, Lukas. Thank you also to the audience, and stay tuned for more news from the fintech industry.
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