One Million EPayments Accounts Frozen as UK’s FCA Tightens Nooze on Crypto Related Firms

The UK certified digital money institution, EPayments Systems Ltd, has been forced to terminate is online payment processing service because of AML (anti-money laundering) guidelines laid down by the Financial Conduct Authority.

EPayments has published an explanatory statement on its website, while providing relevant details regarding FCA’s statutory verification to clients via email.

The guideline issued by FCA has resulted in freezing of one million user accounts and prohibition on opening new accounts.

“Following discussions with the FCA, ePayments has agreed to suspend activity on customer accounts until remedial action has been undertaken to the satisfaction of the FCA.”

The FCA has licensed ePayments to offer services such as issue of IBAN linked virtual accounts, handling payments, prepaid cards, disbursing e-money and processing electronic money wallets via the EU since its initial rollout.

With the prevailing prohibition, clients will be able unable to conduct any kind of transactions such as deposit, withdraw or transfer of funds or even use ePayment cards.

The core ePayments team was associated with a cryptocurrency exchange Digital Securities Exchange previously, when cryptos was not overseen rigorously in the UK.

Customers of early ePayments could utilize the platform to exchange cryptocurrency and fiat.

As users of ePayments have an obligation to comply with KYC guidelines and reveal ID information before establishing their accounts, the exact reason for the shutdown by the FCA is not known.

In January, there were news reports that the FCA has become the sole regulatory authority in the UK, tasked with ensuring and overseeing AML guidelines compliance by crypto related business.

After a decade of working in little to no AML legislation environment, the UK-based cryptocurrency businesses now stare at a considerably tought set of regulations.