Cars, boats, watches and art paid for in stablecoins — the check that goes in the file before the keys change hands.
The cash limit is what moved these payments to crypto. The obligations did not move with them.
Why crypto turned up in the showroom
An EU-wide limit of EUR 10 000 on cash payments takes effect on 10 July 2027, and several Member States already apply lower ones. A buyer who used to arrive with a bag now arrives with a wallet, and the payment is faster, final and — unlike the cash — permanently recorded in public. That last part cuts both ways: it is the reason a check is possible at all, and the reason a bad payment cannot later be explained away.
The same regulation names persons trading in high-value goods, in precious metals and stones, and in cultural goods and works of art as obliged entities, with art and cultural-goods transactions caught from EUR 10 000. Separately, transactions in motor vehicles from EUR 250 000 and in watercraft or aircraft from EUR 7 500 000, acquired for non-commercial purposes, are reportable to your financial intelligence unit.
What this looks like as a control rather than a policy document
The honest version is short. Before you accept the payment: does the paying address appear on an official sanctions list; has the stablecoin's issuer frozen it; does the transaction you were shown actually exist on-chain with that amount and to your address. Three questions, all answerable in seconds, all from sources you can show someone.
After you accept it: a record that says which data those answers came from, on what date, and who decided. Sanctions data changes daily, so the defensible claim is never 'the address is clean' — it is 'on this date, against this list version, it was not listed', which is a claim that stays true.
How KYTGate fits a business that does this twice a month
There is no integration to build. The sanctions and stablecoin-freeze checks on this site are free and need no account; the free plan adds 50 recorded screenings a month, each producing a signed receipt and an exportable evidence pack for the sale file. Paid plans exist for dealers doing this weekly, and the price is on the pricing page rather than behind a call.
What KYTGate does not do, and will not pretend to: identify your buyer, verify a passport, value the goods, or tell you who owns a wallet. It checks the payment against public sources and keeps the proof that you did.
Three situations, handled
A EUR 300 000 car paid in USDT
Screen the paying address and verify the transaction before the vehicle is released, then export the evidence pack into the sale file alongside the reportable-transaction paperwork.
The issuer freezes the address after delivery
Your receipt shows the freeze did not exist when you checked, read live from the issuer's own contract at that moment — which is the difference between a timing fact and a missed control.
Your FIU asks for the transaction reference
The record carries the chain, the transaction hash, the amount as settled on-chain and the address, so the report cites the payment itself rather than your summary of it.
Best fit: dealers in cars, yachts, aircraft, jewellery, watches and art — and the galleries, auction houses and free-zone operators around them — who take occasional crypto payments and need one check with proof attached.
Still working out which obligations apply to you? Who must screen crypto payments sets out the two layers — sanctions, which bind every EU business today, and due diligence, which binds a defined list of sectors from 2027 — with the source next to each row.
Decision-support software, not legal advice. Which obligations apply to you depends on your licence and structure — confirm with counsel.