Wirex may face card outage in EEA due to UAB PayrNet licensing issue.
Crypto payment service Wirex’s debit cards may not work in the European Economic Area (EEA) due to Lithuania’s central bank revoking the license of UAB PayrNet, which is Wirex’s card provider. The company sent an email to some customers on June 23 about this issue. Cryptopay, Wirex’s competitor, also announced that its cards may not work in the region due to the same problem. Wirex is a multi-currency crypto payment app with fiat on-ramps and off-ramps, and it claimed in 2020 to have over 3 million users in Europe and Asia.
The email sent to Wirex customers stated that the “current card partner” is experiencing issues causing an interruption in debit card service for EEA customers, but it “has no impact on your ability to access your funds through any other Wirex means, such as our IBAN service, or via transfer and purchase of cryptocurrency on the Wirex app.” The company added that customers don’t need to take any action since the funds are held in the app and aren’t affected by card services issues. Wirex said that the problem was caused by UAB PayrNet, not by any issues within Wirex’s system.
The Bank of Lithuania announced on June 22 that it was revoking UAB PayrNet’s electronic money institution (EMI) license due to violations of legal acts, including failing to administer Anti-Money laundering (AML) provisions to prevent its services from being used for illicit financing. Client funds are safe and safeguarded in separate dedicated accounts, according to the bank. Wirex has switched to Transact Payments Malta Limited to handle its debit card services and is working to get its debit card system up and running again with both PayrNet and Transact.
Wirex has been expanding its service offerings over the past two years, partnering with 1Inch to provide wallet-based token swaps to customers in August 2022 and integrating with the Avalanche (AVAX) network in February 2022 to allow users to deposit AVAX and spend it through a debit card.
