The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has lifted its freeze on Wirecard based credit cards. The removal will allow customers with Wirecard issued Cards to “use their cards as normal”.
This restores services for millions of customers who had been temporarily unable to access money or make payments through payment apps which rely on Wirecard’s technology.
The restrictions were placed on Newcastle based Wirecard Card Solutions (WCS) by the United Kingdoms financial regulator, FCA on On 26 June 2020. These restrictions remove the possibility of WCS deposing assets/funds and other regulated activities.
The company however still faces restriction on where transfer its assets and where it can hold customers cash as the FCA continues to monitor it.
WCS is UK arm of the Wirecard Group, This freeze came on the heels of ongoing events in Germany concerning Wirecard’s parent company, Wirecard AG which filed for insolvency.
Wirecard filed for Insolvency on Thursday which was sternly followed by the FCA placing a freeze on the activities of Wirecard while it did a quick review in order to protect the consumer.
“We have been working closely with Wirecard UK and other authorities over the last few days to ensure that the firm was able to meet certain conditions required to lift the restrictions we imposed on it,” the FCA said in a statement.
WCS offers its prepaid debit cards and additional services such as payment processing for companies like Curve, Pockit and Payoneer. Customers were out in their numbers on various social platforms, mostly twitter to complain about how they cannot use their cards connected to third party companies.
Now consumers and these Third-party companies which used Wirecard are happy about the return of the status quo for Wirecard activities. Such as Payment company, New York-based fintech company, Payoneer:
Payoneer issues its prepaid Mastercard powered by WCS, It guarantees its customers that all funds owed to their customers would be honoured even if Wirecard couldn’t.
Payoneer in fact pull out all the avenues to reassure its customers that they were addressing the concerns. Action such as Emailing it users, reaching out to its third-party partners such as Upwork, and uploaded videos to YouTube which included its CEO(Scott Galit) and COO(Karen Levy).
Payoneer has indicated in an email to its customers that it will seek an alternative payment provider for its prepaid cards going forward while continuing to use WCS.
Travel Money specialists, FairFX:
UK Business banking startup, ANNA Money:
UK personal banking company, U Account:
UK based Fintech company, Pockit :
Card Payments company, Curve:
WCS is happy with the decision and affirms it will continue to work with the FCA to lift the remaining restrictions.
“There may be a delay before all card programmes are fully operational, so some customers could find themselves unable to transact immediately but we anticipate this lasting no longer than 24 hours. We apologise for the inconvenience to our valued customers that the temporary suspension caused,” the UK firm said.
On the other side of the pond, The US subsidiary of Wirecard has placed itself up for sale.
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