Banking Circle, Kraken and the False Comfort of a Name Match In a recent Austrian victim case, three transfers totalling €60,749 went to Banking Circle IBANs displayed inside Kraken as fiat funding details. The payer saw his own name as beneficiary and received a positive Verification of Payee result. The
Money Moves in Seconds. Europe’s Fraud Framework Is Too Slow to Obtain Financial Evidence — And Too Weak on What Must Follow The EU is improving bank-account discovery, fraud monitoring and information sharing. Three EFRI case files show the two gaps that remain: authorities still lack a sufficiently fast and
Poland Wants Meta Fined €250 Million Over Scam Ads. But What About the Victims? In June we argued on this site that EU fines will not repay scam victims, and that a redress fund is needed. Poland’s demand of 27 August gives that argument a live test case, and this
StablR confirms more than 20 million unbacked token units remain in circulation StablR has for the first time quantified the unauthorised EURR and USDR tokens still in circulation. According to the issuer, 6.41 million EURR and 14.33 million USDR of unauthorised tokens remain in circulation without corresponding reserve assets. The
Austria Builds a Stronger Payment-Blocking Regime — but Repeats Germany’s Blind Spot Government Bill 594 d.B., XXVIII. GP (amendments to the Glücksspielgesetz and the Telekommunikationsgesetz 2021); introduced in the Nationalrat on 5 August 2026. The new § 56e GSpG enters into force at the end of 31 December 2026. EFRI
StablR: EFRI asks MFSA what became of its 2025 ‘exhaustive analysis’ One year after the Malta Financial Services Authority told EFRI that it was conducting an “exhaustive analysis” of concerns surrounding StablR Ltd, EFRI has returned to the regulator. Two significant developments make renewed scrutiny necessary: the May 2026 StablR
Banking Circle 2025: The Payments Bank Whose Largest Fee Line Is Not Payments An EFRI financial-structure analysis based on Banking Circle S.A.’s audited financial statements for 2022–2025, its regulatory disclosures and its own product descriptions. It makes no finding of criminal or regulatory misconduct. Where the accounts do not permit
Banking Circle’s vIBAN Model in Practice: Kraken, Bano and the Look-Through Problem EFRI has repeatedly argued that the principal risk of virtual IBAN structures is not the IBAN itself. It is the separation between the bank whose name appears in the payment chain, the regulated intermediary that is the bank’s
The OCC’s Rejection of bunq: A Continuing Fit-and-Proper Question for DNB The refusal of bunq’s U.S. banking charter is not simply a failed expansion project. For De Nederlandsche Bank (“DNB”), the decision produces information that maps directly onto DNB’s own published criteria for the continuing fitness and propriety of persons
Section 230 Doesn’t Shield Meta’s AI-Generated Scam Ads U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Chief Judge Richard Seeborg — Bouck et al v. Meta Platforms, Inc., No. 3:25-cv-05194-RS; order on the motion to dismiss dated 24 March 2026, followed by a subsequent dismissal on securities-preemption grounds reported
