.svg)
German paytech Nexi has been fined for falling short of its legal anti-money laundering (AML) obligations.
In a statement issued on Thursday (April 3), Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFIN), said it had fined the company €30,000 (£25,400) for “deficiencies in money laundering prevention”.
It added that the deficiencies led to a violation of the Payment Services Supervision Act, which requires institutions to establish and maintain organisational governance measures, including compliance with the Anti-Money Laundering Act.
Nexi said that the regulatory offence was because of unfulfilled money laundering requirements in the financial year 2023.
“The fine was incurred due to deficiencies in the AML prevention system in 2023. Nexi Germany, which runs a multi-million business with significant investments in Germany, implemented the corresponding measures in 2023 in a matter of weeks, and fully remediated the objection in March 2024.”
It added: “Fulfilling regulatory requirements is a priority for Nexi Germany. In the past years we have steadily implemented additional measures to further enhance the robustness of our anti-money laundering prevention system.”
BaFin’s enforcement push
The fine is the latest enforcement action by Germany’s financial services regulator, which has highlighted the importance of AML measures in recent weeks.
In March, it fined white-label payments company, Ratepay — itself part of the Nexi group — €25,000 for breaching the Payment Services Supervision Act by submitting unsubstantiated reports of suspected money laundering.
Later that month it issued a supervisory notice on the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing, as well as the risks associated with circumvention transactions.
It warned that circumvention transactions pose a significant money laundering and terrorist financing risk and urged the application of enhanced due diligence measures.
