Thread by @ianbeckett

@ArmitageJim @premnsikka 1/ Offshore #PSP (Payment Service Provider) #CheckoutDOTcom (formerly #OpusPayments) - “Checkout”: ‘how Europe’s most valuable start-up lost its crown’ (ft.com/content/308048…). Checkout (like it’s PSP brethren) was ‘formally’ authorised by the …

2/ UK’s blind eyed financial regulator (@TheFCA, formerly #FSA) in 12/2012, following implementation of the 2011 #Emoney regulations: Checkout’s website would follow months later. The FCA’s ‘#Emoney scene’ has been long covered by a thick ‘FCA fog’ which scandal …

3/ after scandal has sunk in to (#Wirecard, #AlliedWallet, #Payza etc - the subjects of future exposes). Little is known from the press about Checkout (precursor: #OpusPayments) - many press articles read like the same company press release, simply regurgitated.

4/ However, ‘rumours’ about the thorny issue of the historic lifeblood of the FCA’s ‘Emoney scene’: the secretive processing of pornography (membership/affiliate) & offshore online gambling (bets/withdrawals/affiliate) payments lingered. In a 12/2020 ‘#Sifted’ interview …

5/ with Checkout’s honcho ‘Guillaume Pousaz’, it was reported: ‘One European investor told Sifted that Checkout’s pitch deck shows it still generates sizeable revenue from adult sites’ - to which Guillaume Pousaz responded “It’s not true … it’s quite annoying people say that.”

6/ Bloomberg followed this in 10/2022 with: ‘Swiss dropout worth $14bn moves start-up away from porn’, alleging Checkout’s former clients included; #Mindgeek (#PornHub etc); #OnlyFans & #MondoCamGirls. Checkout responded: “Checkout has since exited adult content entirely … ”.

7/ Checkout had reportedly gone ‘full tonto’ on crypto. Crypto/fintech reportedly accounted for ~50% of Checkout’s payments volume last year with offshore crypto exchange giant #Binance (banned by the #FCA in 2021) reportedly it’s top merchant … until the #CryptoContagion.

8/ Checkout’s early post FCA auth. website (2014) contained a rather curious ‘payment disclaimer’, centred around the apparent use of the ‘#WebMoney transfer system’. IF this means the use of the major Russian ‘Webmoney Transfer’ payment platform, one ponders afresh the FT’s …

9/ report of one of Checkout’s senior exec’s comments IRO their ‘clients with major Russian business’. Until 2019 Checkout’s UK address was ‘1st Floor 32 Wigmore Street London’, which was also linked to Curacao based ‘United Trust Cpy’. The address was also home to …

10/ a nest of LPs (+ a wider web of SPVs), some with alleged links to United Trust Co.; ‘Kensington Europe Ltd’ (Nicholas Warshaw); Panamanian lawyer ‘Delio Jose De Leon Mela’ … along with a whiff of the FSU.

11/ Domain records ‘back in the day’ (2010) for OpusPayments..com (before Checkout..com & UK SPV ‘Checkout Ltd’ was a thing) show it also sharing the same Wigmore Street address, along with UK SPV ‘Net Ventures Business Intelligence Ltd’ “NVBIL”. Saddled up at NVBIL: …

12/ #OpusPayments’ (+ the future Checkout’s) honcho ‘Guillaume Pousaz’ (UBO); the future Checkout’s London office manager ‘Renata Brozyna’ & United Trust linked ‘Alex Smotlak’/‘United Secretaries Ltd’. NVBIL was incorporated in 2009 concurrently with the gestation of …

13/ #OpusPayments from Mauritian m-commerce gateway #SMSPay (Ajaye Poonyth, then Mauritian State Bank head of info-business: post #OpusPayments runs Mauritian payment gateway/merchant aggregator #A1Payments). Opus Payments’ website back in the day (2010) purportedly operated …

14/ as a payment gateway/authorised PSP with a network of its own ISOs (Independent Sales Organisations), resellers & agents funnelling in merchants/merchant aggregators. It’s website boasted of having “turned high-risk accounts into its field of expertise” & “we balance our …

15/ portfolios to be able to underwrite some high risk business which make sense for the greater good.” Opus Payments described it’s core clientele as direct response ad networks; ‘affiliate’ networks; ‘memberships’; domain & hosting services; ‘digital content’; Asian e-commerce.

16/16 How fascinating it would be if Opus Payments’/Checkout’s honcho followed through with his promise to open their books to Sifted ... the historic & offshore books that is.