Not the case. The bitcoin you paid in and the bitcoin refunded to you are tied directly to your real identity, so I'm not sure what value "laundering" would have. There are no dirty bitcoins--see the U.S. Gov sale of the Silk Road coins as proof of this.
Bitcoin does have mixing services that would "launder" or obfuscate the link between bitcoin and your real identity, which does provide value for some users.
As far as I know you can't make a purchase without having valid payment data. There might be a work around, but probably not via Bitcoin payments. Bitpay is definitely subject to KYC / AML compliance.
What is "valid payment data"? How do they validate this data?
You need to have a valid payment method. I'm not sure how better to explain this... a credit card or paypal account etc. It's validated when the payment clears. Both of these have strong identity data linked to them.
KYC (Know your customer) / AML (Anti Money Laundering) compliance means validating the identities of those you do business with. That means, using Steam to launder money isn't possible. This should be pretty obvious.
>You need to have a valid payment method. I'm not sure how better to explain this... a credit card or paypal account etc. It's validated when the payment clears. Both of these have strong identity data linked to them.
No, paypal doesn't do ANY identity verification for customers beyond fraud scoring and AVS.
For cards, you can just get a prepaid. And most cards outside of the US don't even support AVS, so there's no way for valve to validate any of the information you give them besides the PAN and CVV.
>KYC (Know your customer) / AML (Anti Money Laundering) compliance means validating the identities of those you do business with. That means, using Steam to launder money isn't possible. This should be pretty obvious.
I don't think Valve is covered (or considers themselves to be covered) by either of those, and they certainly don't appear to be doing any of the typical KYC stuff.
Bitcoin does have mixing services that would "launder" or obfuscate the link between bitcoin and your real identity, which does provide value for some users.