A thread on Wirecard North America related issues, historical facts, and new findings.

Some history first. PayPal was founded in 1998, named Confinity then. A year later, @elonmusk joined by merging Confinity with X.com, an online financial services company back then. Musk became CEO replacing Peter Thiel in 1999. X.com was renamed into PayPal two years later in 2001 and went public in October 2002. A few months after, eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion, making it the de-facto payment system for eBay purchases. Stripe gradually became another Silicon Valley based e-payment giant starting 2008.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal

eBay's takeover of PayPal was the sounding bell for many in the banking and finance sector. PayPal was mainly focused on US customers and banking systems in North America, hence entrepreneurs in other countries began building similar solutions like PayPal and connected to their national banking systems and servers.

One e-payment startup in Canada was SureFire Commerce Inc. Founded in 1999, the company signed a complex and shady agreement with Wirecard's predecessors ebs Electronic Billing AG and ebs Holding AG from Munich, Germany only a few weeks before eBay bought PayPal.

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Klaus Rehnig became member of the supervisory board, Dr. Markus Braun was appointed Director of SureFire Commerce Inc. for a brief period of time until September 2003, when SureFire's founders Mitch Garber and Joel Leonoff renamed SureFire into TerraPayments and took back control of the financial services provider.

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TerraPayments became OptimalGroup in 2014. SureFire founder Mitch Garber told a New Jersey Casino Control Commission in November 2013 that OptimalGroup engaged into a "non-prosecutorial agreement with US Department of Justice" officials. A, quote, "very expeditious and smart way to let the company [OptimalGroup] grow".

Meanwhile, ebs Holding turned into Wirecard AG by 2005 and it can be assumed that a similar deal was struck with Munich's public prosecutor's office: a non-prosecutorial agreement that lasted for many years to support the buildup of a serious PayPal pendant in Europe and Asia. Such agreements between prosecutors on the one hand and large corporations on the other potentially include protection payment schemes, usually arranged by lawyers.

OptimalGroup was merged with other companies into PaSafe Group. In 2017, SureFire Commerce founder Joel Leonoff sold PaySafe to CVC Capital Partners and BlackStone for $3.9 billion, which took the company public shortly after.

paymentexpert.com/2019/05/30/pay ...

Since 2016, Wirecard had operations in Northern America. Wirecard bought Citi Prepaid Card Services in September 2016 for $20 million, taking on all 120 employees and establishing a presence in Northern America since then.

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According to the testimony of a former Wirecard IT Director, the company outsourced its so-called 'Elastic Engine' payment software to servers run by AWS in Toronto. When trying to obtain transaction records in 2019, she was turned down, could not obtain information from Canada.

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Canada's Mitch Garber cashed out from the sale of various gambling and ePayment corporations that went public and joined Apollo Global Management in New York to fund other projects. Former BaFin Director Felix Hufeld, who got fired for his handling of Wirecard in 2021, joined Apollo Global Management in 2022.

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Wirecard's insolvency administrator Jaffe sold Wirecard North America in October 2020 for an undisclosed price. The company is operated by 2 to 100 employees company 'North Lane' since, which merged with DaVinci Payments shortly after being in charge of Wirecard North America operations, the two rebranded themselves to 'Syncapay'. Behind Syncapay is a majority equity investment from funds that Centerbridge Partners advises, most likely also Apollo Global Management Inc.

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According to a whistleblower and still in early 2021, Disney USA issued prepaid cards with the Wirecard logo to its global employees, a proof that Wirecard North America was an entity that operated largely independent from the mother corporation in Munich. Wirecard North America could have theoretically been a hub for large money launderings.