(25 June 2025 – France) Listed payments giant Worldline, which processes €500 billion in payment transactions annually, deliberately chose to protect fraudulent web shops because it feared a significant loss of turnover.
The French listed payment company Worldline structurally covered up fraud by customers over several years. Despite warnings from the company’s risk department the group deliberately opted to retain banned, high-risk fraudulent customers because they generated high levels of turnover.
Worldline is not popularly known to the general public but plays an important role in the international economy in processing more than €500 billion in payment transactions per annum. In addition to debit card transactions, the group mainly handles online payments with credit cards for web shops and websites.
Capital Brief reports that major European news outlets published an investigation titled Dirty Money by the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) journalism consortium, alleging that Worldline concealed and conspired to maintain relationships with prohibited and high-risk merchants — typically online gambling and dating services.
ANZ sold its merchant acquiring business, which processes merchant payments, into a joint venture with Worldline in 2020, receiving just over €300 million for a 51 percent controlling stake.
In December, Capital Brief broke the news that ANZ was looking to buy back the stake, as Worldline struggled globally and the Australian arm, ANZ Worldline, underperformed.
A source familiar with the original ANZ transaction said the contract includes “relatively standard” provisions around reputation and regulatory compliance, which ANZ would now “almost certainly argue have been breached”.
“There’s the danger of a spiral here and the issue is, even if it doesn’t involve the ANZ joint venture, it will mean the local team are going to have to answer to local clients without necessarily knowing any detail,” the source told Capital Brief.
Worldline said all high brand risk (HBR) clients still active in its portfolio are now subject to enhanced oversight, based on specific procedures.
“Additional requirements in terms of controls, verifications and evidence documentation have been introduced to ensure ongoing alignment with regulatory obligations and our enhanced internal standards,” the statement said.
“Worldline has progressively ramped up its first and second-line resources to implement the enhanced requirements as part of the ongoing Group-wide Financial Crime Compliance (FCC) strategy to pursue reinforcement of supervision and controls with regular engagement with the relevant regulatory authorities.”