Worldline accused of serving sketchy firms, laundering money

This article includes information about Worldline's stock price change.

An investigative report published Wednesday by the European Investigative Collaborations, or 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.

Worldline issued a press release Wednesday acknowledging the allegations and outlining measures taken since European regulators took action against the company in 2023. Worldline said these measures strengthened its merchant risk framework, including the termination of relationships with noncompliant high-risk merchants, and its fraud ratio is now "below the industry average."

Worldline's stock, traded on the Paris stock exchange, dropped 38% on Wednesday, erasing the equivalent of $578 million in market capitalization, according to S&P.

One of the most recognizable members of EIC that published the report is Der Spiegel, a German weekly and one of the largest publications in Europe. While the investigative media outlet has suffered from fake news scandals in the past, it also has a history of uncovering numerous stories of misconduct.

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 5 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 embroiled in a massive fraud scandal — later moved their business from Wirecard to Payone.

One of the key figures implicated in the Der Spiegel report is Ruben Weigand. In 2021, investigators for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York described Weigand as one of the two "architects" of a sophisticated fraud case involving a marijuana delivery platform. He was convicted of conspiracy to commit bank fraud.

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.

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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, Worldline 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."