FinTelegram already revealed that Klarna, a prominent Swedish fintech company operating under banking regulation through its subsidiary Sofort, is progressively facilitating online casinos and gambling platforms. Most recently, we discovered Sofort as a payment facilitator for the SpinFever platform, part of the Dama Group, which recruits customers in European jurisdictions without a license or regulatory requirements.
Read FinTelegram reports about Sofort here.
Processing Payments For Unauthorized Gambling Platforms
The Dama Group, registered and licensed offshore in Curacao, uses payment agents in Cyprus to process its payments. For the SpinFever platform, this is Strukin Ltd in Limassol. SpinFever accepts customers from Germany, France, Italy, Norway, Austria and other countries for which Dama does not have a license. Therefore, these transactions must be qualified as illegal.
As FinTelegram has already pointed out several times, these payment agents in Cyprus are used by the operators of offshore casino and gambling platforms in order to be able to process payments from players even without a corresponding license in the EU.
In the case of Sofort, SpinFever players are directed to the website of Sofort.com (Klarna) when depositing via the domain https://play.payments.sale and can make deposits via their bank.
SpinFever attracts many German players. In December 2023, almost 40% of the 92,000 visitors were from Germany, according to Similarweb statistics. Just under 21% came from Canada and 12% from Australia.
Klarna‘s involvement via Sofort extends to many online gaming entities such as Casino Infinity, PlayZilla, Boomerang Casino, Casinoly, PowerBet, and SpinFiver. These platforms operate illegally within the EU and other regions and process customer payments through Cypriot payment agents like Strukin Limited, Friolion Limited or Estolio Limited.
Klarna clarified in an October 2021 blog post that its Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) feature would not available for use on gambling sites. Yet, it seems to be engaging with merchants in the gambling sector, raising questions about its involvement with illegal gambling entities.
The Notorious Payment Domain
Hundreds of thousands of transactions from online casinos and gambling platforms are processed via this domain https://play.payments.sale every month.
A Similarweb analysis shows that around 325,000 people visited the website in December 2023. Visiting is not the right term, because players are merely redirected from the platforms via this domain to the websites of payment processors such as Sofort.com.
The Similarweb statistics also show that only online casinos and gambling platforms send referral traffic to this site. These include, for example, MyStake.com, which is operated by Santeda International B.V. on Curacao and works with the Cypriot payment agent Santenda International Limited.