ePayments Systems Ltd has entered special administration six years after an anti-money laundering investigation forced it to suspend its services.
In 2020 a review by the Financial Conduct Authority identified weaknesses in the London firm’s AML systems and controls, which led to customers being unable to conduct transactions or access normal electronic wallet services.
At the time, a Financial Times report said the firm counted the adult entertainment, affiliate marketing and crypto industries among its most important clients, and said it was ‘one of the biggest digital payments companies in the UK’ with over a million digital individual accounts and 1,000 business accounts.
In 2022 ePayments said it would permanently close operations and enter into an orderly, solvent wind-down. It shut down its apps in 2023 and has focused on returning customer balances in recent years.
Earlier this year it claimed to have returned more than £95 million in customer funds in the intervening period. “We have streamlined and strengthened the refund process to make it simpler, faster, and secure,” it stated.
There has been no indication of the volume of remaining balances. However in April 2019 the company was holding £127.5m of clients’ money.
In the year ending April 2019, ePayments made more than £18m profit on revenues of almost £28m.
Now it has appointed Mark Boast and Allister Manson of Opus Restructuring as joint special administrators.
The special administrators are now responsible for managing customer claims against the firm and returning funds to customers, where possible.
ePayments Systems was founded by Mike Rymanov, a serial FinTech and crypto entrepreneur now based in Gibraltar.
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