Wirecard Assessing Singapore Services

The firm is at the center of one of the region’s biggest corporate accounting scandals in recent years, having admitted that €1.9 billion is missing from its financial accounts. Wirecard has informed the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) that it is assessing if it can continue providing its services in Singapore, which include credit card payments and usage of its pre-paid cards, following its parent company’s insolvency filing in Germany.

MAS is closely monitoring the operations of Wirecard, the regulator said in a statement on Tuesday, noting that the company has complied with directions to hold customers’ funds in segregated accounts with banks here.

DBS is seeking details from Wirecard if it can continue to use its services, and will transition to other service providers if necessary, while UOB and OCBC merchant partners use payment gateways by Mastercard and Visa and not Wirecard.

The German payments processor, once seen as a rising star in the fintech world, has come under intense scrutiny over its alleged improper accounting conduct, which came to a head on June 18, when it was supposed to report its full-year-2019 and first-quarter-2020 results after three delays.

However, auditor EY said it could not find sufficient audit evidence of the missing €1.9 billion in the firm’s balance sheet.

This led to the resignation of CEO and largest shareholder Markus Braun on June 19, and his arrest several days later by German authorities on suspicion of market manipulation and false data.

The Singapore Police Force’s (SPF) Commercial Affairs Department (CAD), which deals with white-collar crimes, started criminal investigations into Wirecard’s operations in the country in February 2019.

MAS said on Monday that it was working with the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) and CAD to scrutinize other possible aspects of the case.