Worldline shares lost more than a third of their value on Wednesday after a group of 21 European media outlets alleged that the French digital payments company covered up client fraud to protect revenue, reports Reuters.
German regulator BaFin had banned Worldline's German subsidiary Payone from working with 450 clients in 2023 and imposed sanctions on the company for failing to comply with anti-money laundering and anti-fraud requirements.
The allegations by the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) network of international media outlets said that Worldline, one of Europe's biggest payment processors with 500 billion euros ($581 billion) of transactions handled annually, has since continued to work with hundreds of those clients through its other subsidiaries, citing internal data.
Reuters could not verify Wednesday's EIC reports and there are currently no formal regulatory investigations of the company in the public domain.
Worldline said in a statement that, since 2023, it had strengthened merchant risk controls and terminated non-compliant client relationships.
Read more of this report from Reuters.
Read Mediapart's investigation on this issue (in French) here.