Home » Wirex may suffer card outage in EEA due to UAB PayrNet license issue

Wirex may suffer card outage in EEA due to UAB PayrNet license issue

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Debit cards offered through crypto payment service Wirex may stop working in the European Economic Area (EEA), according to a June 23 email the company sent to some of its customers. The shutdown threat was triggered by the Central Bank of Lithuania, which revoked the license of UAB PayrNet, the provider of Wirex cards.

The news comes after Wirex’s competitor, Cryptopay, also announced that its cards may stop working in the region due to the same problem.

An email was sent to Wirex customers on June 22nd. Source: Wirex

Wirex is a multi-currency crypto payment app that offers on-ramps and off-ramps fiat as well as debit cards. It claimed in 2020 up to they have more than 3 million users throughout Europe and Asia.

An email sent to customers said that “our current card partner has experienced issues and this is causing disruption to our debit card service for EEA customers.” The disruption “has no impact on your ability to access your funds through any other Wirex means, such as our IBAN service, or by transferring and purchasing cryptocurrency in the Wirex app.” Customers do not need to take any action as a result of this information as the funds are stored in the app and are not affected by the card services issue.

Wirex stated that the problem was caused by UAB PayrNet, not any problems in the Wirex system.

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On June 22, the Bank of Lithuania announced that it did appeal Electronic money institution (EMI) license of UAB PayrNet “for serious, systematic and multiple violations of the law”. Among other allegations, the central bank alleged that PayrNet was not properly managing anti-money laundering (AML) provisions to prevent its services from being used for illicit financing.

In its announcement, the Lithuanian bank claimed that client funds were safe, saying they were “secured in separate dedicated accounts”.

Cointelegraph attempted to contact UAB Payrnet via email but did not receive a response at the time of publication. Payrnet Director, Stephenas Couttie, supposedly according to Google’s translation of the text from the Lithuanian news site Verslo Žinios, “the central bank’s actions are not adequate.” The director seems to feel that PayrNet is facing disproportionate penalties, out of proportion to the violations committed.

In its email to customers, Wirex said it is transitioning to Transact Payments Malta Limited, which will provide debit card services. This plan has already been worked on, but is being accelerated due to current issues. We are “working hard” with both PayrNet and Transact to get their debit card system back up and running as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, customers in the EEA region may not be able to use their cards.

In the last two years, Wirex has been expanding its range of services. In August 2022, he partnered with 1Inch to provide wallet-based token swaps to their customers. In February 2022, it integrated with the Avalanche (AVAX) network, allowing users to insert AVAX and spend via debit card.