Payabl’s Group CEO Ugne Buraciene has been shortlisted for the Merchant Payments Ecosystem (MPE) Influencer of the Year 2026 award. While the nomination highlights strategic positioning and platform integration claims, it also comes at a time when the company faces heightened public and legal attention in Cyprus.
The FINMA-regulated fintech Klarpay was founded in 2019 by former BDSwiss executives with offices in Switzerland and Cyprus. They secured CHF 3 million in seed funding in 2022. The company announced the appointment of Markus Emödi as the Chief Legal & Compliance Officer and Deputy CEO. He joins Klarpay from CIC, the fourth-largest banking group in France, and has over 20 years of experience in the financial industry.
Cyprus-based high-risk payment processor Payabl has become the latest addition to the Visa Direct Preferred Partner Program, PaymentExpert reports. The membership will provide Payabl access to Visa’s tools to improve real-time payment solutions. There is an intense discussion on Twitter about the payment processor specializing in porn and gambling and its founders, Ruediger Trautmann and Dietmar Knoechelmann. The company recorded a 182% YoY growth with its high-risk merchants.
The Similarweb September statistics came out and show that the number of visitors to the website of Cypriot-German payment processor Payabl (formerly PowerCash21) increased tenfold in Q3 2022 - from just under 15,000 to almost 140,000. Similarweb says that more than 55% of website traffic has been sourced from porn sites and just under 35% from gambling, betting, and lottery sites. Payabl is thus likely to have replaced the collapsed Wirecard in Germany as the high-risk payment processor, Similarweb suggests!
Klarpay is a FINMA-regulated FinTech and received an investment from Payabl Group a few months ago. The latter was founded by former Wirecard executives Ruediger Trautmann, Dietmar Knoechelmann, and his wife Ayelet Fruchtlander-Knoechelmann. Klarpay announced that in Q3 it became a Principal Member of the VISA network and integrated Visa’s B2B Connect, which enables Klarpay’s business customers to perform cross-currency outbound payments. And it introduced Apple Pay.
A few months ago, the Cyprus-based Payabl. (formerly PowerCash21) founded by former Wirecard managers Ruediger Trautmann, Dietmar Knoechelmann, and his wife Ayelet Fruchtlander Knoechelmann, led a CHF 3 million investment in the Swiss FINMA-regulated Klarpay AG. Key people of Klarpay are based in Cyprus, and Turkey is probably the most important market according to the latest Similarweb statistics. Klarpay appears as a BDSwiss spin-off, with most of its key executives having worked for the CySEC-regulated broker.