In March 2022, the Estonian FIU forced Russian-controlled Garantex Europe OÜ d/b/a Garantex to surrender its crypto license due to money laundering issues with Russia. However, many other FIU-licensed crypto payment processors controlled by Russians engage in illegal activities. One is the notorious scam facilitator and merchant service provider Payeer OÜ d/b/a Payeer, which apparently makes most of its transactions with customers from Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine to date. We exposed Payeer as a payment facilitator for several scams. Here is our July update.
Key data
| Trading name | Payeer |
| Domain | https://payeer.com |
| Legal entities | Payeer OÜ (Estonia) PayCorp Limited (Vanuatu) |
| Related individuals | Ivan Abramov Toomas Taro (submitted license) |
| Jurisdictions | Estonia, Vanuatu |
| Regulators | FIU Estonia VFSC |
| Facilitated scams | Capital Letter, FXTradePremium, Deal Trade Optimus Markets, Spintop Capital and counting |
The Legal Entities
Shortly after our March 2021 report on Payeer was published, the company swapped its Estonian legal entity. Fincana OÜ, which until then had been listed as a co-operator alongside Paycporp Limited on Vanuatu, was exchanged for Payeer OÜ, FIU-licensed since March 2021. The user agreement states that the Estonian entity provides crypto services while the Vanuatu entity Paycorp Limited provides payment services (merchant services), registered as International Company with the Vanuatu Financial Services Commission (VFSC).
The Website Traffic
According to the latest Similarweb statistics, visitors from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine accounted for about 50% of Payeer website traffic in June. In this month, the website received 4.9 million visits with an average duration of almost 6 minutes. Payeer is ranked #11.057 in the Global Websites ranking and thus one of the most successful crypto payment processors. These are impressive numbers.
Related Individuals
At Payeer OÜ, the Russian Liubov Svezhentseva (see passport on the right) used to be registered as a director alongside the Estonian Dmitri Allikas.
Since April 2022, Estonian Ivan Abramov is the only registered nominee director. This guy holds several dozen positions in Estonian companies. Among others, he has been a director of the vanished crypto payment processor MisterBit. According to the information available, the Russian is either the direct beneficial owner, or she holds the shares in trust for other Russians.
The Estonian VASP register shows that the Anti-Money Launderings (AML) expert Toomas Taro (LinkedIn) submitted the application for the Payeer crypto license.
The crypto and fiat payment processor Payeer was a payment facilitators for broker scams such as FXTradePremium, Capital Letter, Deal Trade, Optimus Markets, Spintop Capital and others.
On Trustpilot, Payeer has a 4.7-star rating with a corresponding “Excellent” trust level from more than 2,000 reviews.
Share information
If you have any information about Payeer, its partners, and operators, please let us know via our whistleblower system, Whistle42.
