PAYTEND EUROPE, UAB has lost its licence

The business relationship monitoring measures applied by PAYTEND EUROPE, UAB were not sufficient to identify suspicious customer activity. The inspection identified serious and systematic deficiencies across all stages of the monitoring process: from internal control procedures to employee responsibilities and monitoring measures applied in practice. As a result of these deficiencies, alerts indicating potentially suspicious activity were not consistently analysed in a timely and thorough manner, and internal investigations were conducted only formally or remained incomplete. Furthermore, despite the presence of indicators warranting further escalation, the institution failed to submit suspicious transaction reports to the Financial Crime Investigation Service.

During the period under inspection, the following significant deficiencies were identified in the area of the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing: PAYTEND EUROPE, UAB did not have in place effective internal control procedures, did not ensure a clear distribution of functions, and did not allocate sufficient resources in this area. The institution also failed to ensure proper management of conflicts of interest, without control functions having been appropriately separated from business interests.

In addition, it was found that the electronic money institution provided to Lietuvos bankas incorrect information about its business relationship with a high-risk customer and failed to retain and submit to Lietuvos bankas the correspondence related to its business relationship with this customer.

The institution failed to approve and submit, within the set time limits, its audited annual financial statements for 2024 and other mandatory documents, as well as supervisory reports.

Upon assessing all the circumstances, the licence of PAYTEND EUROPE, UAB has been revoked. This means that, as of 3 March, the institution may no longer provide any financial services and must inform its customers about the procedure for settling with them within five business days. Customers who hold funds in the accounts opened with PAYTEND EUROPE, UAB must apply directly to the institution concerned for their return. Funds must be returned to an account at another financial institution as indicated by the customer.

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Information on enforcement measures applied by Lietuvos bankas, complaints concerning the imposed sanctions and the results of their investigations can be found here.