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
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
FINOM/Banking Circle/Triventa: a €314k pass-through at a DNB-licensed EMI A fact-based EFRI Case Note built on the FINOM account statement, Companies House filings, Banking Circle’s Article 15 GDPR response, the DNB register and public-register publications, a Sumsub onboarding report, correspondence, a Kifid decision and published Dutch judgments. It makes no
The EBA’s May 2024 report confirms there is no legal definition of “virtual IBANs” (vIBANs) in EU law. What many PSPs sell as vIBANs are IBAN-formatted identifiers that route to a separate “master account”. This architecture creates reconciliation benefits for merchants, but also a long list of AML/CFT, prudential, and
