Worldline's Woes Deepen as Belgium Opens Probe Into Payment Firm
(Bloomberg) -- Worldline SA has long claimed to have cleaned up its payments business. Now, regulators and investors are testing that narrative after fresh allegations it overlooked fraud among high-risk clients.
The Brussels Public Prosecutor's Office on Friday said it has opened a probe into Worldline's Belgian unit following a series of media reports claiming the French firm ignored warnings and continued doing business with prohibited and high-risk clients, allowing some fraudulent transactions to persist. Sweden's Financial Supervisory Authority said it called the company to a meeting.
Such attention deepens the crisis at a company that serves 1.4 million businesses around the world and says it's Europe's biggest payments provider. Chief Executive Officer Pierre-Antoine Vacheron, who has decried the reports as an orchestrated 'attack' on the company, has also said that they have negatively affected the firm's reputation among clients.
The company's market value, which peaked at about €24 billion ($28.1 billion) less than four years ago, is now below €900 million after shares dropped as much as 11% on Friday. That pares some of Thursday's 20% rebound, which itself followed a 38% drop on Wednesday.
Its struggles are the latest example of a European payments firm seemingly unable to decouple from the murky corners of the Internet that are typically shunned by large banks. And it will do little to help the payments industry shake off the stigma of Wirecard's failure in 2020 after an accounting scandal that led to the arrest of its chief executive officer and left the German firm unable to find more than $2 billion missing from its balance sheet.
Bernstein analysts have said this week's articles contained little substantially new since reports in 2023, when the German financial watchdog Bafin imposed restrictions on Wordline's Payone subsidiary. But they raise significant reputational risks and could damage Worldline's business relationships. The company works with payment networks Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. and many European lenders including UniCredit SpA and BNP Paribas SA.
Its ties to Credit Agricole SA are particularly close. The French lender announced a joint venture in 2023 and subsequently acquired a 7% stake in 2024 to help stabilize its struggling payments partner. That prompted staff this week to question management about the decision.
Earlier this week, several media outlets coordinated by the European Investigative Collaborations network published reports alleging the firm moved high-risk customers — including pornographers and dating websites — across jurisdictions rather than losing their business despite warnings they were defrauding customers.
A report by Dutch newspaper NRC alleged that Worldline in 'recent years' didn't ban lucrative customers with high fraud rates even as its risk management department pressed for stricter checks. Swedish paper Dagens Nyheter said that Worldline moved multiple high-risk clients from Worldline Belgium to its Swedish subsidiary to hide them there after credit-card provider Visa Inc. raised alarms.
'The company allegedly processed payments for companies engaged in illegal activities and for which money-laundering regulations were allegedly not respected,' the Brussels Public Prosecutor's Office said in a statement on Friday. The probe focuses on the Belgian entity of the Worldline group, and has been entrusted to the Federal Judicial Police, officials added.
Meanwhile Sweden's Financial Supervisory Authority on Wednesday called the company to a meeting to ask 'questions about the information described' and 'how the company works to ensure that their services cannot be exploited for criminal purposes,' FSA spokesperson Karin Franck said in emailed comments to Bloomberg.
Worldline said in an emailed statement that it 'acknowledges the initiation of an investigation for money laundering' in Belgium and 'will cooperate with the authorities.' The opening of a probe doesn't imply the company is guilty of any wrongdoing.
While Worldline's activities in the payment sector can be traced back to the 1970s, the firm's modern incarnation was created as the electronic payment unit of French computer services firm Atos Plc in the 2000s. It was listed in 2014 and spent the following years consolidating the sector with a string of acquisitions, including a purchase of SIX Group's payment business for €2.3 billion in 2018.
--With assistance from Steven Arons, Charles Daly and Abhinav Ramnarayan.
(Updates with comment in fifth paragraph)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Mint
an hour ago
- Mint
US Treasuries Post Third Week of Gains on Fed Rate-Cut Bets
(Bloomberg) -- US Treasuries closed out a third-straight positive week in a rally fueled by bets the Federal Reserve is ramping up to cut rates at least twice this year. The Bloomberg US Treasury index posted a 0.8% return for the week in its best run since early April. It's now on track for its biggest monthly gain since February. The advance has been driven by several economic data points that reinforced rate-cut wagers and by speculation President Donald Trump will name a more dovish Fed chief. Fed officials Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman have also signaled in recent days they'd be open to lowering rates as soon as the next meeting. 'The market really got excited on the Fed dove narrative,' said Gregory Peters, co-chief investment officer at PGIM Fixed Income. That now 'puts data more at the fore.' The gains for the week came even after the bonds slipped on Friday. Yields on maturities across the curve rose following the release of economic data that pointed to firmer-than-expected inflation. 'The market overshot a bit based on Waller and Bowman language and now we're taking some of this risk off into the weekend,' said Ed Al-Hussainy, rates strategist at Columbia Threadneedle Investment. A Bloomberg gauge of the dollar separately rallied to the day's high on Friday after Trump said he would be cutting off all trade talks with Canada and threatened to impose a new tariff rate. Canadian government debt jumped on the news, outpacing developed market peers. The market could well find further support from supply-and-demand factors including Monday's month-end index rebalancing, which has the potential to drive buying, and from a gap in the coupon auction calendar until July 8. Read: Jim Millstein Says US Risks 'Fiscal Disaster' If Recession Hits Traders are also fully pricing in two rate cuts this year, with the first coming in September. They currently see a less than one in five chance of a July rate cut, but will focus on plenty of fresh data next week, topped by the June employment report. That data is released Thursday ahead of the July 4 holiday. Job creation is forecast to ease to 120,000, down from 139,000 the prior month, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg. The unemployment rate is seen nudging up to 4.3%, and while still contained, such an reading would mark a fresh peak since 2021. 'There is a little bit of optimism that rate cuts are coming, most of that is driven by governors Waller and Bowman basically referencing that July is in play,' Gennadiy Goldberg, head of US rates strategy at TD Securities told Bloomberg TV. He said the rest of the FOMC was split in two camps calling for either two or no rate cuts this year. TD expects the next rate cut to arrive in October as by that stage, the Fed will have enough data on inflation and the jobs market. 'It is going to be a drift lower in rates, and that's why our year-end forecast for 10-years is 4%,' he said. Other tailwinds to Treasuries include proposed US changes to a key capital buffer, which Powell said should bolster banks' roles as intermediaries in the market. Meanwhile, the removal of the Section 899 'revenge tax' proposal that had been worrying Wall Street had little market impact, though it could improve sentiment toward US assets at the margin. Traders are also monitoring Trump's proposed 'big beautiful bill,' which is nearing a vote in the Senate. It has fueled concerns surrounding the US fiscal deficit, weighing on longer-maturity Treasuries. Wells Fargo strategists see the potential for the spread between 10-year and 30-year yields to widen to 75 basis points by end-2025, in what they describe as a 'fiscal blowout' scenario. The difference in yields is currently around 55 basis points. 'We expect very long duration bonds to continue lagging their five- and 10-year counterparts,' a team led by Michael Schumacher wrote in a note. 'The significant relative rise in 30-year yields is due to investor concerns about potential supply.' (Recasts with weekly performance.) More stories like this are available on
Hindustan Times
an hour ago
- Hindustan Times
Who is Mohamed A? Syrian teenager charged over plot to attack Taylor Swift's Vienna concert
A Syrian national living in Germany was charged with supporting a foreign terror group in connection with a foiled plot to attack pop sensation Taylor Swift's concert in Vienna in August 2024. A Syrian teenager has been charged over plot to attack Taylor Swift's Vienna concert.(Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP) Identified as Mohamed A, the German authorities have described him as a juvenile, while he has not been taken into custody. Accused of following Islamic State (IS) ideology, he allegedly helped another key suspect in preparation for the attack, BBC reported. In an official statement, Germany's federal public prosecutor informed that Mohamed A "adhered to the ideology" of Islamic State since April last year. He remained in contact with a young adult from Austria between "mid-July and August 2024" as there were plans for a bomb attack at a scheduled concert of Taylor Swift in Vienna. As per The New York Times, charges against the "Syrian teenager" were filed last week, but were only made public on Friday, June 27. So far, his exact age has not been made public by the authorities. Some of the charges include supporting a foreign terrorism organisation as well as helping prepare a "serious act of violence endangering the state.' The German investigators have accused him of keeping with privacy rules. He allegedly helped in translating bomb-building instructions from Arabic as well as providing text for an oath of allegiance to the key suspect for joining the terrorist organisation. Taylor Swift's concerts As part of her historic Eras Tour, the 35-year-old was expected to perform three concerts at the Ernst Happel Stadium in Vienna between August 8 and 10 last year. When government officials got to know about a planned terrorist attack, the shows were later canceled. Later on, two people were taken into custody. These included a 19-year-old with alleged links to ISIS as well as a 17-year-old, who was also said to be inspired by the terrorist group and al-Qaeda. Thereafter, another person was arrested on August 9 last year, who was identified as an 18-year-old coming from the "social environment" of the main suspect, The Associated Press reported. According to BBC, the main suspect in the case is Beran A, who is believed to be part of an IS cell in eastern Austria. He is now 20 years old and was arrested after a tip-off by the CIA. FAQs 1. How many people were expected at Taylor Swift's concerts in Vienna? As per reports, 65,000 fans of the singer bought tickets for the three shows on August 8–10. 2. What was Taylor Swift's reaction? In an Instagram post, she said the cancellation due to the threat filled her with a "new sense of fear." She added that she felt "a tremendous amount of guilt" as a large number of people made plans to take part in her shows. 3. What was the schedule for Taylor Swift's Eras Tour? It kickstarted in Arizona in March 2023, while the final show was held in Vancouver, British Columbia in December last year.
India Today
2 hours ago
- India Today
Are U.S. Presidents selling war for profit?
Behind the pomp of presidential summits and NATO handshakes lies an uncomfortable truth—America's foreign policy isn't driven by diplomacy, but by the defence lobby's bottom line. From Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech to Trump's brash missile marketing, every US president has doubled as the world's most powerful arms dealer. The numbers don't lie. Defence giants like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon pump over 80 million annually into lobbying, with nearly 280 million flowing to political campaigns since 1990. This isn't charity—it's investment in influence. Every dollar spent returns tenfold in government contracts and overseas sales NATO's latest pledge makes this crystal clear. By 2035, member states must spend 5% of GDP on "defence"—a windfall wrapped in security rhetoric. Buried in the fine print: 3.5% goes directly to military kit, much of it stamped "Made in USA." European taxpayers will fund American factories whilst their own public services face the revolving door spins faster than a Chinook's rotors. Pentagon officials become corporate executives, senators join defence boards, and generals turn consultant. This ensures continuity regardless of election results—the real winners remain never bothered with subtlety, openly flogging Patriot missiles at NATO summits like a market trader hawking knockoff watches. Biden played the statesman whilst quietly expediting record arms transfers to Ukraine. Obama collected his peace prize then approved 135 billion in weapons sales. Different styles, identical tragedy became America's opportunity. Every HIMARS rocket fired was a billboard for US firepower. Every Patriot battery deployed was a sales demonstration. Zelensky's desperate pleas for seven more systems weren't just about survival—they were free advertising for American defence human cost is staggering, but so is the opportunity cost. Half of America's discretionary budget feeds the military machine whilst schools crumble and hospitals close. NATO's spending spree threatens similar austerity across isn't foreign policy—it's product placement with geopolitical consequences. When the next crisis erupts, remember: someone dies, but someone else gets rich. In America's war economy, that's not a bug—it's the entire bloody point.- Ends
