Scarred by Wirecard, Germany Takes on a Global Payments Scandal

When the FBI arrested Ruben Weigand on a March 2020 layover at Los Angeles International Airport, alarm bells rang at payment companies thousands of miles away in Europe.

The German national had connected several of them — including the now-defunct Wirecard AG and a business called Payone that is now part of Worldline SA — to lucrative customers, such as operators of pornography and dating websites, according to people familiar with the matter.

His arrest, at a time when allegations of questionable accounting at Wirecard were already rattling the industry, prompted several payment companies to review their ties to the broker. ...