An investigative report published Wednesday by the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) network alleges that Worldline, a major French payments processor, and its German subsidiary Payone, processed billions of euros in transactions since 2014 that enabled controversial porn and dating sites, prostitution, online casinos and alleged money laundering across its client base.
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The allegations
The investigation, titled “Dirty Payments,” claims Payone failed to meticulously vet its clients, ignoring warnings of money laundering, particularly with high-risk customers such as dating and porn sites, according to the Der Spiegel report.
Internal documents indicate Payone, a company handling over five billion transactions annually, processed “payments worth hundreds of millions of euros per year” for dubious providers, according to Der Spiegel.
The investigation also suggests that some companies who previously used Wirecard — a major German financial firm
One of the key figures implicated in the Spiegel report is Ruben Weigand. In 2021, investigators for the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York
Weigand “referred hundreds of providers of porn and dating sites” to Payone, and his clients “accounted for a large part of the profits from Payone’s high-risk business,” according to Spiegel, generating over 50 million Euros in transactions in 2019 alone.
Auditors from Mazars found that while Payone performed a risk assessment on these clients, it did not conduct an in-depth review, “especially from the perspective of money laundering,” according to Der Spiegel, citing the Mazars report.
Former Payone CEO Niklaus Santschi reportedly “downplayed the problems for a long time,” stating in April 2021, “we are still convinced that the portfolio is clean from a compliance perspective,” according to Der Spiegel.
However, just days later, Payone separated from the merchants introduced by Weigand.
The German financial regulator, BaFin, publicly announced in September 2023 that Payone displayed “serious deficiencies in compliance with and implementation of the required enhanced due diligence obligations under the Money Laundering Act,” according to Der Spiegel. BaFin consequently prohibited Payone from executing transactions for certain high-risk customers.
However, internal documents indicate that some companies with which Payone ended its collaboration — in particular, Swiss-based companies that operate “dubious dating and affair portals” — are “still processed through another Worldline subsidiary, essentially a sister company of Payone,” according to Der Spiegel.
BaFin issued an order against Payone in January 2025 that requires the company to maintain increased capital and address deficiencies in money laundering prevention. It also appointed a BaFin representative to monitor Payone’s implementation of anti-money-laundering controls.
Worldline’s response
Since 2023, Wordline has “strengthened its merchant risk framework to ensure full compliance with laws and regulations,” according to the Wednesday press release from the company. Worldline said it has also “conducted a thorough review of its High Brand Risk (HBR) portfolio” and “has terminated commercial relationships deemed non-compliant with its strengthened merchant risk framework.”
“These decisions affected merchants representing €130 million run rate revenue in 2024,” the company said in the press release.
Worldline also reported that all of its HBR clients still active within this portfolio are “now subject to enhanced oversight, based on specific procedures,” and it “progressively ramped up its first and second-line resources to implement the enhanced requirements as part of the ongoing Group-wide Financial Crime Compliance (FCC) strategy.”
Worldline’s executive management and board of directors are “fully committed to strict compliance with regulation and risk prevention standards and to strictly enforce related rules and procedures with zero-tolerance.”