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IBAN Wallet - another P2P ponzi?

Oct 14, 2020

“iBAN Wallet - the digital banking alternative at your fingertips.“ - this was the promise to Seedrs investors, who invested £170 679 in 2 campaigns, valuing the company at £20 million. What happened later? Let’s find out.

iBAN Online - how it started

The Seedrs campaigns happened in 2017 and 2018, and the website was ibanonline.com - now it is shut down, but previously it looked like this:

Some more info about secured loans and returns:

And the team from Seedrs page:

Team from their slide deck:

What happened later?

Risk Manager - left in April 2017
Co-founder, Head of Investor Relations - left in June 2017

But there are 3 persons on LinkedIn, who still claim to be working and being co-founders of IBAN Wallet:

Daniel Suero, CEO
Marc Hurr, Director
Glennys Rosario, operations manager

If you look at ibanonline.com - it is not working, but if we look at their UK company - it still is operating, but with no real activity:

So if you ask me - website is shut down, UK entity not active - I would say that the 20 million project failed. But the founders obviously did not want to give up.

IBAN Wallet - another attempt?

New domain ibanwallet.com was registered on 26 April, 2018, and the promise looks very similar to ibanonline.com:

Also the investment offers are almost the same - higher return = longer term:

But if you try to find out more info - where is money invested, how is it secured, etc. - it is not possible. Website provides no info about team, financials, loan originators.

Who owns the company?

If you check their “about us“ page - it is full of text, but zero facts. But in “Terms and conditions“ page I could find at least 1 company name:

“Iban Wallet” means New Generation Market SIA, a business with company number 40203215233, with its head office at Oberwallstraße 6, 10117 Berlin, Germany and registered in Latvia;

First question - why is the company set up in Latvia? As far as I know - they have no employees from Latvia, no office and no co-founders from Latvia. And the activities with Latvian company are suspicious as wel:

June 6th, 2019: Iban Wallet Corporation SIA created, paid capital: 1000 EUR, owner: Marc-Anthony Hurr, address: Rīga, Vējdzirnavu iela 28 - 13

Note that “Rīga, Vējdzirnavu iela 28 - 13“ has been used to create 35 new companies. You might think - well, maybe it is a big office building? Not really, it is a flat in this old residential building:

February 12th, 2020: Marc-Anthony Hurr is removed from company, new company owner: Ahmad Maiwand Noorzai, born in 1990, a French individual with a passport from the Islamic State of Afghanistan. WTF?

According to his LinkedIn profile he is still a student, and his last job was a 3-month internship in 2018.

February 24th, 2020: company has changed it’s address to: Rīga, Lāčplēša iela 87

This address looks a bit better on Google Maps, but the real reason, why it is famous in company register database? There are 90 companies from this address, that have been moved here to “die“ - it basically is a graveyard for companies, who were shut down by State Revenue Service, Latvian company register or creditors.

March 9, 2020: company name has changed to “New Generation Market SIA“

Why was it done? My guess - to hide the connection to Iban Wallet name.

But it gets better - let's check the latest financial report:

Turnover in 2019: 0 EUR, employees in 2019: 0

So this is a completely empty shell. No activity at all, just an empty company with no assets or revenue, and registered in a location where other companies are left to die.

Key facts about IBAN Wallet

Owner: Ahmad Maiwand Noorzai, passport from the Islamic State of Afghanistan, living in France, student, last job experience: intern. No mention of IBAN Wallet in his Linkedin profile.
Company is set up in Latvia, but has no connection to Latvia
Company was registered in a suspicious, residental address
Company was moved to an address where 90 other companies were left to die
Company changed the name, address, owner - all in the span of 1 month
Company had 0 EUR turnover in 2019
Company had 0 employees in 2019
IBAN Wallet claims to have “head office“ in Germany, but according to LinkedIn have 0 employees there.
IBAN uses phone number from UK, but again - no employees seem to be located there.
Most of employees are from Spain, Mexico, Portugal, very few from Italy, Dominical Republic according to their LinkedIn page.

In short - we see many countries, 2 inactive companies, but still not clear - who are the real legal entities that collect all the investments? And who owns those?

Who is providing payment services to IBAN Wallet?

Probably no bank would touch Iban wallet, so according to reviews they are using a payment service provider called “PECUNIA CARDS EDE, S.L.U.“, who got their license only in 16.04.2018, their legal address: Calle Guzmán El Bueno 133. Bajo B. Edificio América. 28003-Madrid, Spain

If you have any complaints, here are their contacts:

Guzmán el Bueno 133, Edificio Germania, 28003
Maestro Ángel Llorca 6, Edificio América, 28003
webinfo@pecunpay.es, +34 91 345 78 17

But it does not have the best reputation, so not sure they will help:

So you might need to get in touch with Bank of Spain, who regulates the payment provider.

Reviews

And then there are reviews… Many fake ones, but if you filter those out, you get to see the real experience from those, who tried using Iban Wallet:

Cant cancel an investment renewal
Been trying to cancel an investment before its renewal for more than a week. No one has resolved anything. Their customer services takes ages to answer and they just don't do anything. I don't know if I'll ever get my money back. DON'T TRUST THEM! I've sent emails to several addresses without any response, have reached them through WhatsApp and in app chat. They just don't even try to resolve the issue. Even the phone number of my assigned financial advisor doesn't exist.

Unable to withdraw my money
Unable to withdraw my money, I've sent many documents to verify my resident, yet it keeps being rejected everytime.

P2P platform with zero transparency
P2P platform, which is in my opinion better to avoid. Why? Because of total lack of transparency. Where is a company behind based? Is it Berlin/Germany, as it stands in their T&C? Or in Latvia, where the company shall be registred, according to their T&C again? Or in London/UK, as their main phone number (virtually unreachable anyway) has British dialling code and in London some company called Iban Wallet Corporation Ltd. is registred? Or in Madrid/Spain, because if one tops up his account, the beneficiary is Spanish company Pecunia Cards e.d.e. s.l.? Impossible to get an answer! Is there any particular person behind the company known? Yes, if you communicate with their helpdesk, you get answers from people, which are probably real, with linkedIn profiles, working for iban since about half a year or so. Does this calm down your doubts? Not mine! Who is the owner, who is the boss? Top secret. In which p2p segment are the money from your account invested, how does Iban Wallet generate an income for your intrests? No clue. And even the behaviour is unpredictable. It happened twice to me that my account has been suddenly blocked, with no previous warning. If you ask why, then you follow my questions I forwarded immediatelly to iban wallet. What was their "automatic"-like answer? We blocked your account due to our internal policies, we will ublock it soon. This had been the only information I had got about my 4.000 € for about one week! I tried to create more helpdesk-tickets (always the same "automatic" reply), I tried to reach them via chat function on their main www (the same "automatic" answer again), tried to contact them on phone (unreachable). You can imagine how does one sleep with 4.000 € in such trouble. Finally, after one week, I could reach my money again. No explanation why the withheld my money for one week, by the way in their T&C no word about that they would reserve a right to block account for any reason. Do you want to have your money handled this way? I don't think so. I think you are not surprised I withdrew my money out of there with intention to put them there never again. Which is pity, because I miss a solid solution providing instant liquidity in EUR with reasonable interest rates. Last but not least the app has really nice design and it is nice to observe, how much money you earned overnight - till you meet first problem and you realize, you have no idea what happened to your money. Trust me, I am no fraud, so what happened to me can happen to anyone.

Still no refund!
This is a scam. They don't give you your money. First they will make you go through a bunch of hoops before they even consider giving you back your money.
1. They ask details when you gave it already in the initial email/contact. So you email again.
2. They give an answer that is off-tangent but nothing about how to get your money back. So you email again.
3. They say that you need to provide your bank details. So you reply again.
4. They say that you need to provide a bank document. So you reply again.
5. They say it will take 3 days. So you wait.

I've been waiting 15 days now. Still no refund.

I've been waiting 7 days from my last follow up. Still no reply.

HORRENDOUS experience. Dishonest...stay away!
Absolute HORRENDOUS experience with this extremely unprofessionally run company. I WOULD NOT trust them with your hard earned money! Here's my story:

I am across Ibanwallet online and thought it is an intriguing concept. I went ahead and funded through credit card payments to the tune of almost $50,000. Naturally, due to the large amount of deposits, I had a few questions about the program and wanted to speak to what I was hoping would be a qualified, well trained representative.

REG FLAG 1
Their phone only answers 25% of the time and it's the shadiest VOIP system on the planet. Call line is horrendous. They are supposedly headquartered in London as their website would lead you to believe. However, as one would soon find out, NOBODY actually works out of the UK. And to throw a curveball, this very TrustPilot profile has them as a German company. Yet their service reps work from Portugal and Mexico and are poorly trained. They are nice people, I guess, but are not qualified to deal with depositors with any level of sophistication. OK fine, I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

RED FLAG 2
After my interactions with Catia from Portugal and Ricardo in Mexico, I was not feeling warm and fuzzies, and asked for a withdrawal (along with my earned interest) to test the system. Surprisingly, their USD withdrawals only work with a USD IBAN, which is not the norm as the standard USD denominated accounts require SWIFT instructions. They instructed me to send an email with my bank account details and informed me that this would have to be done manually. There was internal confusion on their part and I ended up sending the instructions twice.

RED FLAG 3
Two days after I was assured I would be transferred my USD funds, they elected, without notice or communication, to refund my original payment to my credit card/Paypal, excluding my earned interest! I made it abundantly clear that I needed the funds transferred to me instead of going to my credit card. They assured it was not a problem and to email them my account details. Needless to say, I was done with this company but also wanted my earned interest.

Email from Catia dated October 25, 2019:

“I’ve confirmed this situation, about your money being refund by PayPal and it happens because when you make a deposit this way the withdrawal has to be done in the same way. I'm really sorry for not being able to give you that information before.

I would also kindly ask you to please access your App and request the withdrawal of the remaining value that you have in your account. This withdrawal will be made to the US account that you gave us!”

RED FLAG 4 - Interest payment still pending
It is now November 19, nearly a month later, and I still have not received my interest.

On October 28 I was emailed, “Thank you! I've already requested the withdrawal to your US account.”

After following up with them on that I still have not been sent my interest, on November 4 Catia emailed me, “We are having some issues with the $ transfers and we're trying to solve this as soon as possible. We hope to be able to complete your withdrawal until the end of this week.”

I sent follow up on November 8 and November 14. It’s now been 15 days since I last heard from them. It appears they’ve simply decided to ignore me… WOW!

RED FLAG 5 - Fake reviews
It's so obvious that these guys and their friends/associates wrote fake reviews here on TrustPilot. Somehow, against all odds of probability, they had 11 short and snappy reviews all written on June 21, 2019. The next review is June 23 and then we jump to 9 reviews July 15! And by the way, one of them is Ricardo, the customer service guy that was so happy not to help me! How genuine is that? TrustPilot should have better quality control audits on these fake reviews.

CONCLUSION
I normally don’t write reviews, and when I do they are positive. But this experience has been an absolute disaster, and if these employees are a reflection of the management they report to, it's even scarier!

Ibanwallet, you can keep my interest. You guys should be ashamed of yourselves.

UPDATE: January 16, 2020

Filipe just responded to my review saying my "case has been handled by our customer support and that the withdrawal has been made successfully in the end." No it hasn't. When exactly was my interest paid? I still don't have it. BS. And guys stop with the fake reviews it makes me sick.

Strong warning
Strong warning! I opened an account on October 3rd and sent 1000,00 Euro to it. Still today the money doesn't reached my account. I wrote many times to the support sending the transfer certification from my bank but they were given no answer to me. I tried all support lines but nobody is available. Neither to the chat in the app nor the email support answers. So it seems to be that "Iban" is fake! My money seems to be lost!

What to expect?

Maybe I am wrong, but I expect that following will happen:

Those, who will try to withdraw money will face the same obstacles already described in reviews:
- blocked accounts
- document verification
- slow responses, long delays
ibanwallet.com will be shut down, just like ibanonline.com before
Investors will lose lot of money
Maybe someone will create another lawsuit, but who to sue? The company with 0 EUR revenue, owned by a guy from Afghanistan? Or someone will need to find out the real legal entities that are used for collecting investor money, paying salaries, etc.

Any other similar platforms?

There are 2 more P2P platforms that are famous for hiding all the critical info: FastInvest, Quanloop. If you can find out, where the money is invested and who are their loan originators, and where to get their financial reports, I will buy you a beer. Or if you know any other shady platform, write a comment or reply to email.

Key takeaways

IBAN Wallet is hiding all the critical info and founders don't even own the company. Why?
TargetCircle promoted Kuetzal, Envestio, Monethera, Wisefund, Grupeer, IBAN Wallet. See any similarities?
If IBAN Wallet will later turn out to be a fraud, it might be the first one that got investors with promising super low returns.