Crypto Payments | FinTelegram News

Category: Crypto Payments

June 18, 2021

SG Veteris and its crypto payment brands Koinal and Bitpace

Koinal (www.koinal.io) and Bitpace (www.bitpace.com) are two trading styles of SG Veteris Limited, a company that used to be registered with the Uk Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) as an agent until October 2020. After that, it was temporarily registered as a crypto asset business with the FCA but no longer is. While Koinal offers crypto exchange and payment services, including payments with credit and debit cards, Bitpace is focused on merchants offering them a crypto payment gateway to accept crypto payments from their clients.

Crypto Payments

June 14, 2021

Scam-facilitating Estonian crypto payment processor Tinkbit offline

As recently as March 2021, white-label payment gateway provider Akuratoco announced via press release that, in addition to Tranzzo and Connectum, it has also integrated licensed Estonian crypto payment processor Tinkbit OÜ d/b/a Tinkbit (www.tinkbit.com) into its portfolio. Surprisingly, today the website is down and producing the Error 1016 Cloudflare error message. Maybe it's just a short-term problem, maybe not. In recent months, Tinkbit has come to our attention as a scam-facilitating payment processor.

May 22, 2021

Research Update on Estonian crypto payment processor and scam-facilitator Woodstocks

Over the years, we have learned that public (open) investigations evolve. Typically, after publishing initial reports or Requests 4 Information (R4I), we receive additional information from whistleblowers and victims. With the new information, we continuously update the reports. Therefore, it has often seemed like a mosaic of information for our readers to piece together. We try to avoid this Mosaic Approach in the future. Therefore, here is a new-form update on the licensed Estonian crypto payment processor Woodstocks OÜ d/b/a Coinmond and FMA Crypto.

May 8, 2021

Notorious high-risk payment processor iPaytotal launches unregulated Estonian CryptoMatix

Until recently, Aditya Williams was the registered director of the Estonian iPayTotal OÜ but was replaced in March 2021 by the Estonian nominee director Monika Sild. Currently, iPaytotal does not have a license from the Estonian FIU to operate a crypto payment platform. Nevertheless, the company is the operator of CryptoMatix, which Ruchi Rathor apparently set up. However, it seems that iPayTotal OÜ may try to obtain an FIU crypto license to get more involved in the crypto payment segment.

April 23, 2021

New – List of scam-facilitating Estonian crypto payment processors

Digital currencies are the future in one way or another. For a few months now, online payment pioneer PayPal has also been accepting bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies. Estonia is currently the epicenter of European crypto payment processors. As of mid-2020, the Estonian FIU had issued more than 3,000 licenses (report here). Unfortunately, many of them are used to facilitate scams and illegal payment services. We have drafted a list of Estonian crypto payment companies that have come to our attention in scams.

April 23, 2021

Update PayTechno – Beneficial owner from Israel, another platform, and Bulgarian offices

We are really excited to be able to rely on our loyal whistleblowers. Therefore, we have received some important information in response to our Request 4 Information (R4I). Based on KYC data, we can establish that scam-facilitating PayTechno OÜ is controlled by Israeli Asaf Izhak Rubin as its beneficial owner. Besides, we have received information about the high-risk payment Gateway ironically branded as "The Best Gateway" offering payment gateway services for high-risk online merchants. The office of the group seems to be in Sofia, Bulgaria.

April 22, 2021

R4I – Scam-facilitating licensed Estonian crypto payment processor PayTechno

We already know Igor Torsin. Don't we? The 62-year old Estonian lawyer works for Estonian company builder Eesti Firma OÜ and is a director at nine FIU-licensed Estonian crypto companies (read this report). Among them is PayTechno OÜ, supervised by the FIU with license number FVT000151. The company was registered in May 2018 and operates two domains www.cryptopaytech.com and www.paytechno.com. The latter is one of the worst scam-facilitators as a crypto payment processor. We would like to know more.

April 13, 2021

Licensed Estonian scam-facilitator Woodstocks and its payments network

We have recently discovered the licensed Estonian crypto payment processor Woodstock OÜ as a payment processor in the Trade Com scams network with GlobalSpotFX, Spotfinex, FXonspot, or TopEuroFX. These scams' victims deposited money through Woodstock's bank accounts with Lithuanian financial institutions Finolita Unio UAB, GlobalNetInt UAB, the Maltese Secure Trading Financial Services Limited, and crypto exchanges. Woodstock is controlled by Marianna Charalampous and does not even have a functioning website.

April 7, 2021

Estonian Compliance Issue – The Estonian lawyer Igor Torsin and Eesti Firma

We asked a few days ago, who is this Igor Torsin would be. A busy man for sure. We identified him as a director of nine FIU-licensed crypto payment processors in Estonia. Among these are also some that operate as scam facilitators - PayTechno or Steveyx d/b/a Venus Exchange. Evidently, he is the frontman for getting and maintaining the FIU license. We learned that Torsin is a lawyer working in Tallinn, Estonia, at Eesti Firma OÜ, a company builder specialized in crypto licenses, among other things.

March 10, 2021

Estonian scam facilitator Payeer and its Russian owner

Fincana OÜ, a crypto payment processor, licensed in Estonia by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) as the competent regulator, operates the payment processor Payeer (www.payeer.com) together with Paycorp Limited, which is registered in Vanuatu and licensed by the VFSC. This payment processor has increasingly appeared as a scam facilitator over the last couple of months. For example, in the scams of the Capital Letter group against which regulators issued numerous warnings. The beneficial owner of Payeer is the Russian Liubov Svezhentseva.

Crypto Payments

February 10, 2021

CryptoPayIn – Another scam-facilitating Estonian crypto payment processor

Estonian crypto payment processors are a problem for retail investors and consumers in the EU. Especially those who have received a license to operate crypto payment services from the relevant Estonian regulator FIU. Thus, they call themselves EU-regulated payment processors on the website pretending to be a serious business. Unfortunately, many of these licensed crypto payment providers are scam hard-core facilitators and/or are related to scam operators. Most recently, we identified CryptoPayIn at the Financial Resident broker scam as a payment provider.

January 7, 2021

R4I – Estonian Crypto Payment Processor Bitxtech

BitxTech is a crypto payment processor and exchange operated by CryptoFactury OÜ, registered and licensed in Estonia. Israeli Or Bar, born in September 1987, is registered as the director. BitxTech has increasingly come to the attention of broker scams in recent months as a supporting payment processor. It is also interesting to note that BitxTech and XchangePro use the same application and identical onboarding processes. They appear to be clones or white label solutions.