The financial regulator Bafin is taking action at the Heidelberg payment service provider Unzer.

After a special audit by the Bafin, the subsidiary Unzer E-Com is no longer allowed to accept new customers until deficiencies identified in the acceptance of new customers and in the prevention of money laundering have been remedied.

The authority and the company announced this on Wednesday.

Archibald Preuschat

Editor in Business

  • Follow I follow

According to Bafin, the special audit revealed a large number of deficiencies, some of which were serious, in the areas of appropriate corporate management measures, control mechanisms and processes.

The authority even speaks of “serious” deficiencies in the requirements of the Money Laundering Act.

The most serious shortcomings would have affected a special payment service structure with several hundred merchants, most of them front companies.

“The transaction monitoring for this business was patchy or non-existent.

Operating between 2018 and 2021, the business was unusually profitable.

This resulted in a very high risk of criminal money laundering activities.

“For us, the completion of the audit is an important milestone in the further development of our compliance systems and processes.

We continue to give high priority to optimizing our compliance,” Unzer boss Robert Bueninck is quoted as saying in the company’s announcement.

Unzer E-Com, founded as Heidelpay, is one of the nuclei of today's company.

It currently offers a payment platform for around 4,300 merchants, who usually offer a web shop in retail or are active on an online marketplace.

Unzer emphasizes that the new customer ban imposed by Bafin affects neither current nor new business with existing customers nor the business of other Unzer subsidiaries in Germany and abroad.

According to its own information, the Heidelberg payment service provider has around 70,000 customers and achieved sales of 241 million euros last year, to which the subsidiary E-Com, which has now been sanctioned by the Bafin, contributed 12 percent.