Payoneer First, and Now Paypound - What Has Gone Wrong with the Payment Industry?

Payment processing has always been one of the several integral steps of forex brokers, and unfortunately one of the most scam-and-complaint-ridden steps. Last month, Fazzaco went over the fact that Payoneer, an e-commerce payment service provider, is receiving complaints from across all social medial, such as LinkedIn and Twitter​.

At the same time, Edward Tabus, CEO of the online gaming operator Mad Money Casino, also waged a cyber warfare against Paypound, a high-risk payment processor that provides said service to a variety of clients, including FX brokers. The payment firm, according to Edward, has been allegedly withholding the funds of clients in deliberate manner by falsifying user chargeback requests made to acquiring banks.

In view of such, Fazzaco gathered relevant data from different sources of information, including social media posts, and screenshots of government website, in the hope of projecting the current status of Paypound objectively, as well as various statements, or rumors circulating in the financial market around the payment firm, whether true or fabricated.

Why is Paypound Registered Differently?

First of all, we know Paypound calls itself Paypound, across all social media and in its company website, but, the firm is in fact not what it calls itself. When we entered Paypound Ltd and hit search in Gov.UK, the results shown indicated the entity bearing the name has been dissolved, on September 10 2019, after a compulsory strike-off. But when we go to Paypound's website, and we'd notice that Paypound placed its actual registered name, which is Self Pay IO Ltd, in an inconspicuous corner at the left bottom of the homepage, with a company number 13545186. Now with that number, we extrapolated the following bio of the firm from Gov.UK.

Registration shows that Self Pay IO Ltd was founded on August 3, 2021 by a French named Alizee Cannelle Ghislaine. She was also the sole director and beneficial owner of the company until her resignation in September 2021, whom was then succeeded by Ana Raquel Ortega Arauz. Self Pay IO Ltd's registered address is, Suite 718 Hatton Garden, London, England, which is consistent with what we saw in Paypound's website. So, it's confirmed that Paypound is actually operating under the registered name Self Pay.

But if you search that address with Google Maps, you'll find only a large area of coworking space in Hatton Garden, and there's no actual evidence that can prove Paypound actually operates here. Even more suspiciously, though not verified, when we simply put Paypound in the search bar, we were rerouted to another address, 12 Constance St, London. According to the latest Google Street View of the address taken in May 2022, some LinkedIn users argued that it is hard to believe that this neighborhood is where a formal business that provides B2B payment solutions for multiple industries across the financial services market.

Will Paypound Clarify Its Alleged Ties with Multiple Notorious Payment Firms that Collapsed?

When iPayTotal shut down unexpectedly, and the whereabouts of so many client funds are still unknown, some rumors in the community were saying that the mysteriously disappeared iPayTotal team secretly founded another firm with a name Paypound. So, those who believe in such conspiracy argue that Paypound is exactly iPayTotal with another name as camouflage, who are now, again, withholding and deducting user balance with all sorts of excuses, and a number of brokers have fallen victim of their scams.

In July 2022, BoomBill and its partner Xcepts withheld up to $2.5 million in funds, preventing Paypound from allowing withdraws of merchants, according to an announcement made by Paypound. XCepts, an unregulated "payment processor" founded in May 2022 by an American named Veronica Baitova, who was also closely associated with Paul Schroeder, the infamous figure across the payments industry for being accused of repeated illegal practices.

Final Thoughts

As of four days ago, the funds withheld by Paypound, as claimed by Edward Tabus, have remained unchanged for over seven months and the problem is still unresolved. So far, no reply has been heard on Edward's doubt that the 18 "chargeback" requests were not made by his clients.

Many people in the industry believe that in the payment industry, which is full of fraud and complaints, we, when as customers, must not blindly pursue low cost solutions, and instead we should do our own due diligence before choosing a payment platform - such as requiring the payment processor to provide complete KYB, which is also the industry standard.

After all, no matter how diligent the judicial system and regulatory framework are, fraudsters will always find a loophole, so for customers, both institutional and individual, must always keep an eye out to truly protect our, and of course our clients' funds.

Fazzaco will continue to update the dynamics of the payment industry and only present the most authentic voice of the industry.