Similarweb classifies the high-risk payment processor Advcash as a Russian scheme, which corresponds to our information. The the beneficial owners of the offshore payment processor registered in Belize are not disclosed. However, whistleblowers have informed us that they are Russians. The beneficial owners of Advcash are known to Mercuryo, a payment infrastructure provider that has implemented a crypto-friendly IBAN/SEPA solution for Advcash. Additinally, the ADV2 Wallet was launched via the Canadian Payean Finance Inc.
The Crypto-Friendly Payment Solution
Advcash, regulated by the FSC in Belize, offers its crypto-friendly IBAN-SEPA solutions to crypto exchange users, promising them to avoid the hassles traditional banks make with crypto. Additionally, this new service is offered to merchants and freelancers. This will especially please the many high-risk merchants and scam operators for whom Advcash has been acting as a largely anonymous offshore payment processor for many years.
We assume that the IBAN services are provided by Monetley, and Electronic Money Institution (EMI) authorized by the UK FCA (reference number: 900921).
Mercuryo team has been hard at work over the last few months to bring Banking-as-a-Service to the market. I am incredibly excited about Advcash becoming our partner in integrating this white-label product for millions of users
Petr Kozyakov, Mercuryo Co-Founder and CEO (link)
In parallel with the IBAN-SEPA solution, Advcash has also launched a news website for the ADV2 Wallet which is operated by Payean Finance Inc., a FINTRAC Canada registered Money Service Business (MBS).
Key Data
| Trading names | Advcash ADV2 Wallet |
| Business activity | Payment processor and e-wallet provider |
| Domains | https://advcash.com https://adv2.com https://adv-project.com |
| Social media | Twitter (@advcash and @adv2wallet) |
| Legal entities | Advanced Cash Limited ADV Project Limited Payean Finance Inc.. |
| Jurisdiction | Belize, Girbraltar, Canada |
| Regulators | Belize Financial Services Commission (FSC), licenses MT 000107/97, PPS 000107/98 FINTRAC Canada for Payean Finance, registration number #M21940685 |
| Related individuals | Yaacov Bitton (LinkedIn) Artem Abramov Artem Shulepov Max Eirich |
| PayRate42 | Advcash profile on PayRate42 (orange) |
| Partner schemes | Mercuryo (PayRate42 profile) Monetley |
Short Narrative
Over the last three years, we have found Advcash in many illegal broker activities as a payment processor. These included scams and illegal offshore activities of regulated brokers (mostly CySEC-regulated). Advcash, like Perfect Money or Garantex, is closely connected to the Russian market, merchants, and consumers.
According to the documents available, Artem Abramov and Artem Shulepov Russians are supposed to be the beneficial owners of the Advcash scheme of which the Gibraltar-registered ADV Projekt Limited, a fintech solution provider, is said to be part. The Gibraltar entity was established in 2013 and, until March 2022, was controlled by Artem Shulepov. Since then, the German Max Eirich has appeared as the beneficial owner of the Gibraltar Entity.
The Similarweb Data
The latest Similarweb statistics (17 Dec 2022) show that 17% of the monthly 1.15 million visits come from Russia. The average time spent on the site is over 12 minutes, which suggests that these visitors make payment transactions and do not just visit the site for a short time.
We do not claim at this point that Russian activities via Advcash violate Western sanctions, laws, or regulatory frameworks. However, the data would suggest such an interpretation.
In the last 28 days before 17 December 2022, more than 31% of outgoing links have gone from Advcash to crypto payment processor Mercuryo. There, the referral traffic from Advcash accounted for more than 27% of the total referral traffic. This data suggests that the two Russia-dominated payment processors are cooperating very closely.
Read more reports on Mercuryo here.
Share Information
If you have any information about Advcash, Mercuryo, their merchants, and its activities, please share it with us via our whistleblower system, Whistle42.
