The Bank Secrecy Act, enacted by the United States in 1970, made banks keep records and report certain transactions to combat financial crime.
Officially called the Currency and Foreign Transactions Reporting Act, the law targeted the concealment of money through banks and other financial institutions. It required records that could help investigators trace financial activity and introduced reporting requirements for large cash transactions.
The act was later expanded by amendments and related legislation. Modern anti-money-laundering rules, including suspicious-activity reporting and customer-identification requirements, developed partly through this broader statutory framework.
The Bank Secrecy Act is sometimes confused with the 1933 Glass–Steagall Act, which separated commercial and investment banking, or with the post-2008 Dodd–Frank Act. Those laws addressed different banking problems and were enacted in different periods.