A U.K.-based online payments provider has closed its doors permanently after several troubled years. ePayments Systems announced on its website it has ceased business operations for good having “entered into an orderly, solvent wind-down.”
The payment provider, which processed payments mainly for high-risk online businesses including affiliate marketing companies, has been closed since January 2020 when the UK Financial Conduct Authority suspended it for “weaknesses in our financial crime controls.”
ePayments said it had been working with the FCA on remedying the deficient anti-money laundering controls it had been suspended for, but circumstances no longer allow it to pursue that course and remain in business.
“We have over this period been working hard to ensure these are up to the required standard,” the company said in its statement, “but in these extremely challenging and unprecedented global economic conditions, and with the business being restricted for such an extended period we can no longer sustain the business to build back to what the FCA require and a business-as-usual state.”
Many customer accounts remain frozen, but the company said its main focus now is returning funds, which it claims are “safeguarded,” to those customers.
