Wirecard

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Wirecard AG

logo
legal form Corporation
ISIN DE0007472060
founding 1999
Seat Aschheim , Germany
management
Number of employees 5154
sales 2.02 billion euros (2018)
Branch Payment services
Website www.wirecard.com
As of December 31, 2018

Headquarters of Wirecard AG in Aschheim (2019)

The Wirecard AG , headquartered in Aschheim in Munich is a company founded in 1999 listed payment services company . Wirecard offers solutions for electronic payment transactions , risk management and the issuing and acceptance of credit cards . The company was part of the DAX from September 2018 to August 2020 . The subsidiary Wirecard Bank AG has a German banking license .

In June 2020 Wirecard admitted that assets are over 1.9 billion euros not to show in its balance sheet after the auditors Ernst & Young , the audit opinion had refused for the balance sheet. Therefore, the long-time CEO Markus Braun resigned. He was later arrested on charges of faking of revenue and market manipulation, released on bail the next day and a few weeks later came because of an arrest warrant extended again in custody . Former board member Jan Marsalek is on the run and is wanted with an international arrest warrant . On June 25, 2020, Wirecard filed for insolvency proceedings .

history

Foundation and first bankruptcy

The co-founder Detlev Hoppenrath presented his partner Peter Herold, the managing director of Securitas Internet Systems GmbH, with his business idea of ​​outsourcing electronic payments in 1998 when online trading was still in its infancy. As a result, the company established its own division for the development of the Wire Card product , which was fully developed by October 1998 in cooperation with the online agency Plan.Net . The start-up Wire Card was created in Munich in 1999 through a spin-off of the division and received 4 million German marks in an initial financing round from the Munich venture capitalist Technologieholding (taken over by 3i in 2000 ). The company's first chairman of the board was Hoppenrath, Herold took over the chairmanship of the supervisory board and gave it up the following year.

In 2000, Hoppenrath hired Jan Marsalek because he was familiar with the wireless application protocol . Subsequently, a project known internally as Wirecard 2.0 failed after Marsalek had not informed the management board of problems, which is said to have caused costs of 2 million German marks and threatened the company's existence. Wire Card got help from the business consultancy KPMG , which sent its consultant Markus Braun to the company in October 2000 . Shortly thereafter, he was hired as Wire Card's Chief Technology Officer . Hoppenrath moved to the supervisory board in May 2001 after the company moved its headquarters to Aschheim. At the beginning of October 2001 the Munich entrepreneur Paul Bauer-Schlichtegroll told Braun that he was interested in a stake in or takeover of Wire Card. Bauer-Schlichtegroll's company EBS electronic billing systems AG (EBS), founded in 1998 as EPM AG Entertainment Print Media, operated paid porn websites whose access was billed via dialers developed in-house. In November 2001, during an alleged break-in into Wire Card's business premises, Markus Braun and Jan Marsalek's laptops, which are said to have contained important Wire Card data, disappeared. Negotiations with EBS failed and Wire Card had to file for bankruptcy. Wire Card founder Detlev Hoppenrath suspected that insiders were responsible for the theft, and filed a criminal complaint with the assumption that the bankruptcy would be misused to transfer Wire Card to EBS. The public prosecutor's office in Munich later discontinued the investigation without any result.

Takeover by EBS and listing on the stock exchange

EBS was able to take over Wire Card in January 2002. EBS electronic billing systems changed its name to ebs Holding AG and acted as a holding company . In May 2002 the EBS subsidiaries were regrouped and Wire Card was to appear on the market with its corporate clearing center platform for handling financial processes for large companies and the Corporate Trust Center risk management system to protect against payment defaults in electronic trading.

Wirecard's predecessor company with regard to the IPO was InfoGenie Europe AG, based in Berlin, whose shares had been listed in the Neuer Markt stock exchange segment since October 2000 . As a service provider, it offered advice hotlines on various topics. In March 2002 the EBS subsidiary EBS Mobil acquired more than 25% of the company shares. When the share became a penny stock after falling , the stock exchange operator Deutsche Börse wanted to exclude it from the Neuer Markt, but was forbidden by a court in April 2002. In mid-December 2004, an extraordinary general meeting of InfoGenie decided to bring the unlisted Wire Card AG, whose core business was real-time payment processing on the Internet with risk assessment, into InfoGenie by means of a capital increase against contribution in kind as of January 1, 2005 and to rename InfoGenie to Wire Card AG. Wire Card AG became a stock corporation listed in the Prime Standard stock exchange segment through a reverse IPO . Paul Bauer-Schlichtegroll moved into the supervisory board and Markus Braun became chairman of the board . In June 2006, Wire Card was renamed Wirecard. Wirecard was also included in the TecDAX in 2006 and in the DAX in September 2018 .

International growth

Wirecard Asia Pacific was founded in Singapore in 2007 . In 2008, Wirecard introduced virtual prepaid credit cards for online payments and in the following year a Fraud Prevention Suite for fraud detection that also uses AI and machine learning . In 2014 Wirecard expanded to New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Turkey. Wirecard has also been represented in North America since 2016 through the purchase of prepaid card services from Citigroup . In the same year, the company took over a South American Internet payment service provider in Brazil.

In 2019, Softbank acquired a stake in Wirecard. With the purchase of AllScore Payment Services from Beijing , Wirecard has also been represented in China since November 2019.

Accounting scandal and filing for bankruptcy

Allegations of manipulation

In May 2008, a user writing under a pseudonym published a critical analysis of the Wirecard share in an Internet forum. He criticized the non-transparent reporting, questioned the high profitability and suspected “systematic plunder of the proceeds from the capital increases” because of the capital increases that were still carried out regularly. Since the Schutzgemeinschaft der Kapitalanleger (SdK) accused Wirecard of incorrect or misleading accounting in the summer of 2008, Wirecard AG commissioned the auditing company Ernst & Young with a special report for the 2007 financial year. Later it became known that SdK members were animated by the forum contribution about contracts for difference speculated on falling prices before the announcement of the balance sheet deficits. Fund managers of the private bank Sal. Oppenheim also bet on falling prices and at the same time pointed out to institutional investors before the allegations became known about accounting errors, which can be regarded as price manipulation. Since the share fell by almost 70 percent, Wirecard filed a complaint with the public prosecutor at the end of June 2008 against Sal. Oppenheim's fund manager, who released an employee, and SdK officials. After investigation by the Munich public prosecutor two SdK representatives were in custody arrested and sentenced to prison terms 2012th The author of the forum post was questioned by the police, but the investigation against him has been terminated. Wirecard was seen as extremely aggressive in its actions against critical journalists, investors and competitors; the group's lawyers had already contacted us about minor matters; some critical observers are said to have been shadowed.

Since the Wirecard share fell by more than 30 percent in April 2010 due to a false report by the news service Goldman, Morgenstern & Partners (GoMoPa), the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) initiated an investigation. An investigation by the Munich I public prosecutor's office against GoMoPa was discontinued in October 2012 due to lack of evidence. In February 2016, the price fell again due to a report by the previously little-known analysis company Zatarra Research & Investigation. Analysts accused Wirecard of illegal practices. Industry services saw this as attempted price manipulation. In February 2017, Manager Magazin reported on alleged non-transparent accounting. Wirecard rejected these allegations as unfounded. In February 2019, BaFin had given the German Financial Reporting Enforcement Office (DPR) an audit order due to inconsistencies in the 2018 half-year balance sheet. According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung , essentially only one employee was entrusted with the 16-month complex audit at the DPR.

Reporting by the Financial Times

At the beginning of February 2019, the share price fell again from a good 167 euros to below 86 euros due to three reports by the Financial Times (FT): Employees in Singapore invented customers and sales in order to obtain a business license in Hong Kong and to achieve Wirecard's earnings targets . On February 8, 2019, police officers searched the Singapore branch. Wirecard denied the allegations and filed a lawsuit against the Financial Times and a lawsuit for price manipulation. On February 18, 2019, the BaFin prohibited the establishment and expansion of net short positions for shares in Wirecard AG for two months . With its decision, the Bonn authority set a precedent that sparked heated discussions at the latest with the publication of individual passages in the relevant BaFin files. The Munich I public prosecutor's office has since been investigating a journalist from the Financial Times for violations of the Securities Trading Act . An investigation by the law firm Rajah & Tann from Singapore revealed irregularities which, however, had no material impact on the balance sheet. As a result, Wirecard filed an injunction against the Financial Times to end reporting and to compensate the shareholders. In February 2019, the Wirecard AG Supervisory Board founded its own audit committee chaired by the new Supervisory Board member Thomas Eichelmann .

At the beginning of July it became known that the FDP parliamentary group led by Christian Lindner made a small inquiry to the federal government for specific indications of price manipulation in the Wirecard AG share in 2019. In its response, the Federal Government assessed the intervention of BaFin as correct and disclosed details from ongoing investigations. A stock exchange trader in London had been informed in advance about the critical FT articles and the short sellers identified were known from previous attacks. The government declined inquiries about links between short sellers and FT journalists because of the ongoing proceedings. In April 2019, BaFin filed criminal charges against FT journalists and other people on suspicion of market manipulation .

On October 15, 2019, the Financial Times again raised allegations of manipulation. Internal documents would suggest that Wirecard reported excessive sales and profits at subsidiaries. Wirecard rejected these allegations. In order to invalidate this, Wirecard commissioned the auditor KPMG with a special audit in October 2019 . At the beginning of January 2020, Eichelmann, Chairman of the Audit Committee, also took over the chairmanship of the Supervisory Board. The result of the KPMG investigation was published at the end of April 2020. Accordingly, not all data could be fully evaluated and the allegations could not be completely dispelled. In the area of ​​third-party business, KPMG was unable to make any statement about the existence or non-existence of certain sales revenues. Markus Braun saw Wirecard AG relieved by the report. Wirecard postponed the publication of the 2019 annual report and the balance sheet press conference scheduled for the same day without a new date. The Wirecard share price then fell by 26%.

The Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) filed beginning in June 2020 on suspicion of market manipulation charges against the Chief Executive Officer Mark Brown and three other board members of Wirecard and raiding their premises.

insolvency

On June 18, 2020, Wirecard admitted that the auditing firm Ernst & Young was unable to provide sufficient evidence of the existence of bank balances in trust accounts amounting to 1.9 billion euros. This amount corresponds to about a quarter of the total assets of Wirecard AG. Ernst & Young therefore refuses to approve the balance sheet for the 2019 financial year . Wirecard warned that banks without a certified balance sheet could cancel loans of around EUR 2 billion the following day. Trading in Wirecard shares was temporarily suspended. On June 22, 2020, Wirecard announced in an ad hoc announcement that credit balances in trust accounts of more than EUR 1.9 billion "most likely do not exist". As a result, the stock market price fell by more than two thirds.

The long-time chairman of the board, Markus Braun , resigned and was later arrested on charges of faking income and market manipulation and released the following day on bail of 5 million euros. An arrest warrant was also obtained against Jan Marsalek , a member of the Management Board who had been dismissed without notice on June 22, 2020 and previously served as Chief Operating Officer . Marsalek had initially had a lawyer explain that he would face the Munich public prosecutor's office, but did not comply and fled. He was considered a confidante and “right hand man” of Markus Braun. On July 22nd, Markus Braun was arrested again on a new arrest warrant. With him a former chief financial officer and a former chief accountant came into custody. According to the public prosecutor's office, the allegations were "considerably" expanded based on the statements of a key witness . The three arrested people had faked income since 2015 and wanted to cover up actual losses.

On June 25, 2020, Wirecard filed for insolvency due to impending insolvency and over-indebtedness. The following day the British regulator FCA blocked all payments from the British subsidiary WCS; this also partly applies to payments made by German customers; Payments by the Wirecard Bank, which had not filed for insolvency, were initially not affected. On August 24, Wirecard left the DAX and TecDAX ; the next day, the insolvency administrator Michael Jaffé took over the management of the interim chairman of the board James Freis and the other two remaining board members Susanne Steidl and Alexander von Knoop, who were fired. Jaffé also announced the layoff of 730 of the 1,300 employees.

Products and services

Wirecard offers products and services in the areas of mobile payment, e-commerce , financial technology and value-added services. Wirecard cooperates with around 280,000 companies (as of December 2018), including a. Orange Bank , KLM , Rakuten , BASF , Getty Images , Munich Airport , Telefónica , Aldi or Ikea . Wirecard issues credit and gift cards , including virtual ones. Supported are u. a. Visa , Mastercard , American Express , Discover / Diners , JCB , Alipay , Apple Pay and China UnionPay .

Mobile payment

Wirecard has been offering the boon mobile app since 2015 . for to payment transactions based on a virtual prepaid - MasterCard is based. boon. enables contactless payment via NFC technology. Wirecard uses HCE (Host Card Emulation) and BLE ( Bluetooth Low Energy ) technology for such payments . In addition, other transactions such as transfers can also be made. Due to the insolvency of Wirecard, the service is to be switched off on October 3, 2020.

In October 2019, Wirecard Bank launched the boon Planet app (spelling: boon.PLANET) as a mobile direct bank . This includes a physical and a virtual credit card ( Debit Mastercard ) and a current account . Wirecard Bank is protected by the compensation scheme of German banks . To introduce further services, Wirecard entered into a cooperation with the mobility service provider Here Mobility , in which Daimler and BMW are also involved.

E-commerce

Wirecard Bank checks the creditworthiness of customers and guarantees payments even in the event of default. As a broker between buyer and dealer, Wirecard Bank AG receives less than two percent of the payment amount and extensive customer data for associated risks. One focus is the travel industry. In 2007, Wirecard took over payment processing and credit control for the travel company TUI and in 2014 for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines . The Supplier and Commission Payments (SCP) product is also tailored to the travel industry. Virtual credit cards are issued for payments to partners and suppliers, for example for commission payments. International payments can be processed electronically using virtual credit card numbers.

In the consumer goods sector, Wirecard took over the processing of online business at the shoe retailer Tamaris . In the telecommunications sector, Wirecard signed contracts with O 2 , among others .

With a checkout portal, Wirecard has been offering solutions for integrating many payment methods in online shops since 2014, aimed at small and medium-sized companies as well as virtual marketplaces .

From the end of 2019, Wirecard will provide the payment solution for the Your Gateway to China offer from Swiss Post. Via the cross-border e-commerce offer, Swiss retailers can offer their products directly to Chinese consumers on virtual marketplaces. Wirecard processes all transactions with leading Chinese payment methods.

Digitization of retail

Wirecard's booth at Internet World 2017

The company also supports stationary retail in digitization , for example together with T-Systems in the Connected Store project , which uses IoT technology. This market concept links the data from sensors, intelligent scales and cameras with data analysis and AI software. Wirecard provides an app for this that guides customers interactively. It also offers "invisible" payment when leaving the market and uses biometric customer data for this.

Wirecard generates almost half of its consolidated sales with offers for online retailers and retailers. In March 2019, two new extensions for the shop system of the Adobe subsidiary Magento were announced in order to simplify the integration of online shops into Wirecard's platform.

Alternative Chinese payment methods

Since 2015, Wirecard Bank has been offering Chinese travelers their usual payment method in the euro area with Alipay . To do this, it cooperates with retailers such as B. Rossmann , Printemps , The Body Shop , Swatch or the National Bank of Greece . Wirecard has also been cooperating with WeChat Pay since 2017 .

Since 2018, Wirecard has been cooperating with Gebr. Heinemann , the largest operator of duty-free shops at airports in Europe, in order to also integrate Chinese payment methods. At the end of 2018, Wirecard from Stuttgart made the first "China Pay City" in Germany and introduced Alipay and WeChat Pay to numerous retailers, restaurants, museums and transport companies.

Financial technology

Since March 2018, Wirecard has been offering corporate customers of the Mizuho Financial Group card issuing services (acquiring and issuing) in Asia. In April 2018, Wirecard and the Crédit Agricole Payment Services (CAPS) unit of the major French bank Crédit Agricole agreed on partnerships in digital payment transactions .

Many FinTech companies use the Wirecard banking license. Examples are the start-up Number26 (until 2016), the “smartphone account” Bankomo or the mobile banking provider Mondo. Wirecard also works with well-known FinTechs such as Curve, Funding Circle and Lendico.

Wirecard has been digitizing payment processes for the Japanese airline ANA since April 2019 .

Corporate governance

Board Supervisory board

Key figures

Fiscal year Sales in € million Profit in million euros Employees
(annual average)
2004 6.8 0.05 18th
2005 54.1 8.00 323
2006 81.9 15.44 361
2007 134.2 30.47 459
2008 196.8 42.31 442
2009 228.5 45.52 468
2010 271.6 53.97 500
2011 324.8 61.19 498
2012 394.6 73.29 674
2013 481.7 82.73 1,025
2014 601.0 107.92 1,750
2015 771.3 142.64 2,300
2016 1,028.4 266.74 3,766
2017 1,490.0 259.72 4,449
2018 2,016.2 347.40 5,154

As of December 31, 2018

With regard to the refusal to certify the balance sheet for the 2019 financial year (see above), doubts were raised about the balance sheets for the previous financial years.

Wirecard Bank

  Wirecard Bank AG
Country GermanyGermany Germany
Seat Aschheim
legal form Corporation
Bank code 512 308 00
BIC WIRE DEMM XXX
founding 2006
Website www.wirecardbank.de
Business data 2017
Total assets 1.2 billion euros
insoles 1 billion euros
Employee 133
management
Board Jörg Brand
Daniel Heuser (since May 2020)
Supervisory board Wulf Matthias (Chairman),

Wirecard Bank has been part of the Wirecard group of companies since January 2006 and has a German banking license. The bank has contracts with several card organizations and can conclude card acceptance contracts (acquiring) for their credit and debit card brands. Wirecard Bank is a member of the Association of German Banks and its deposit insurance fund . Wirecard Bank is connected to the cooperative data center of Fiducia & GAD IT AG and uses agree21 as the core banking system . Before the merger of the two predecessor institutions of FGI, Wirecard Bank used bank21 from GAD eG .

In November 2006, Wirecard launched the prepaid Internet payment service mywirecard . Customers can register online and open an account at the Wirecard Bank, which they can then top up by transfer, direct debit, cash or credit card payments. Every customer basically receives a virtual prepaid MasterCard , also as a plastic card on request.

Mycard2go (formerly wirecard 2Go VISA ) has been in the bank's portfolio since 2010 - a prepaid credit card that could be bought in retail outlets and topped up with credit at the time of purchase. Online activation was necessary before use. The program was discontinued on May 31, 2020. Customers were offered a switch to the boon.Planet banking app . The app will be discontinued on October 15, 2020.

Wirecard repeatedly denied allegations of money laundering . The Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) speculated at the end of June 2020 that the Wirecard Bank had attracted fraudulent gangs. Financial criminals who were based in offshore oases could apparently have opened accounts with her without major controls. The SZ quoted the Munich specialist lawyer Peter Mattil, who represents damaged customers and is planning claims for damages against the institute: "Our impression is that these gangs were beaten off at most banks in Germany, but they were given an account at Wirecard Bank, suspicious transaction reports were not made." .

Wirecard Card Solutions Ltd.

The Wirecard Card Solutions Ltd. (WDCS) is a subsidiary of Wirecard based in Newcastle upon Tyne , United Kingdom and offers prepaid credit card solutions for business customers (including Skrill ). Like its parent company, it holds licenses from MasterCard and Visa as well as an e-money license and is authorized by the regulatory authority FCA . The Newcastle location was established in 2011 when Wirecard took over the prepaid card business of the Newcastle Building Society, which is represented with 1.5 million prepaid cards in six European countries, for 7.5 million British pounds (GBP) (around 8.9 million euros). Depending on the success, further earn-out payments of up to 1.5 million GBP (approx. 1.8 million euros) for 2012 and up to 1.0 million GBP (approx. 1.2 million euros) were made ) agreed for 2013. The 24 employees of the former prepaid card business were also taken over.

Since 2016, WDCS has been offering a virtual prepaid card that works wherever a Visa credit card is accepted and that users can top up any amount in advance, allowing them to control their spending.

See also

Web links

Commons : Wirecard  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

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Coordinates: 48 ° 8 ′ 44.9 ″  N , 11 ° 41 ′ 10.7 ″  E