UK FCA freezes Euro Exchange Securities over financial crime concerns

The UK Financial Conduct Authority has blocked Euro Exchange Securities from carrying out any regulated electronic money or payment services, and court-appointed interim managers will run the firm until a June 11 court hearing. For PSPs and EMI operators, the useful part is not the drama; it is the regulator’s message that weak financial crime controls and safeguarding can shut a business down fast.

1. In a Friday, June 5 press release, the FCA said it had taken action against international payments company Euro Exchange Securities because of concerns about financial crime risk. The regulator said there were “serious concerns around the way EES operated its business” and that the firm had “significant risks of financial crime.”
2. The FCA pointed to “systemic weaknesses” in EES’ financial crime framework and safeguarding arrangements, along with issues tied to ownership and governance. In other words: this was not framed as a single bad transaction or one suspicious client, but as a structural control problem.
3. Court-appointed interim managers have been put in place under the Payment and Electronic Money Institution Insolvency Regulations 2021, and EES is due to have an opportunity to be heard by the court on June 11. The company’s home-page email address returned as undeliverable when PYMNTS tried to reach it.
4. Bloomberg News reported that EES has operations in the United States and Spain, and that the FCA asked for the UK proceedings to be recognized in the US. In filings in US federal court, the regulator said it was worried about the “high-risk nature” of some EES customers and potential “widespread breaches” of money-laundering rules.
5. The FCA’s US filing also said companies in EES’ network and its clients had been linked to money laundering, or to failure to prevent it. For banks, PSPs, and EMI partners, that is the part to read twice: the regulator is not only looking at direct merchant risk, but at network and client relationships as well.

This action comes after other FCA anti-money-laundering moves in 2025, including a 21,091,300 pounds fine for Monzo, a 42 million pounds fine for Barclays, and the seizure of seven cryptocurrency ATMs in an investigation that involved four searched locations and two arrests.