FinTech

Fugitive former Wirecard executive Jan Marsalek has been linked to a sprawling, multibillion-dollar money laundering network that British investigators say connects street-level drug dealers in the UK to sanctioned Russian oligarchs and the Kremlin’s security services, the Financial Times reported.

Meta internally projected late last year that roughly 10% of its 2024 revenue, or approximately $16 billion, would come from advertising tied to scams and banned goods, according to company documents reviewed by Reuters. 

Blacklisted charities affiliated with Hezbollah have been directing supporters to send money through Lebanon’s booming digital payments sector, routing contributions to wallets held by private individuals rather than official charity accounts, the Financial Times reported.

Brazil’s central bank is changing how capital requirements are calculated for financial institutions following a recent spate of probes into organized crime groups exploiting the services offered at Fintech firms, Bloomberg reported. 

Worldline SA said an independent review found “uneven” implementation of anti-financial-crime controls across the company, even as the French payments processor reported a drop in third-quarter revenue and outlined plans to streamline its business.

France’s banking supervisor is intensifying on-site anti–money laundering (AML) checks at cryptocurrency firms as it decides which of the country’s more than 100 registered platforms will qualify for EU–wide authorization in the coming months, Bloomberg reported.

UK regulators are holding up Revolut’s full banking license amid concerns that the fintech firm’s risk controls are not scaling fast enough with its rapid overseas growth, the Financial Times reported. 

UK digital bank Monzo is weighing a fresh attempt to secure a US banking license, four years after abandoning its previous bid when talks with regulators stalled, according to the Financial Times. 

International payments cooperative Swift will launch a permissioned blockchain to route transactions among global banks as part of a bid to modernize cross-border payments and blunt the rise of dollar-pegged stablecoins. 

A Singapore court on Monday convicted two businessmen of falsifying documents that misled auditor EY into believing Wirecard held substantial cash in Singapore bank accounts.