Between 2010 and 2018 Israeli binary options schemes conquered and deceived naive investors around the world. Millions of investors worldwide have lost up to $50 billion. With binary options also came the breakthrough of online payment processors, payment orchestrators, and paytechs. Sarel Tal with his brands AlgoCharge, Seroph, or FremainPay was a payment facilitator for binary options schemes. They have since disappeared. Sarel Tal is working as VP EMEA for regulated fintech Rapyd.
So Many Brands And Entities
Assigning AlgoCharge, AlgoPay, or FremainPay to legal entities is not easy. This may well have been intentional. In Visa and MasterCard networks, these brands were assigned to Seroph International (CY) Limited in Cyprus. In French court documents, AlgoCharge is assigned to Seroph Holding BV, registered in Amsterdam. In addition, there is also AlgoPay Limited, which was registered in Cyprus (and has since been dissolved) and previously operated as Seroph Financial Services Limited. However. In all these companies Sarel Tal was involved with his partner Shai Hackam.
Sometime around 2018, AlgoCharge, AlgoPay, FremainPay, and the Seroph Group disappeared. The websites were deleted. The domain AlgoCharge is currently for sale for $10,295 on HugeDomains.
The Wirecard-GMM Connection
The Seroph Group also caught our eye in the Wirecard environment. It was a business partner of the Irish-registered GreyMountain Management Limited (GMM) of the notorious Cartu Brothers in the binary options environment. GMM was a satellite company of Wirecard and processed hundreds of millions of payments from victims of binary options scams. GMM was sent into liquidation in 2017.
However, the GMM story seems to be far from over. Most recently, GMM directors were ordered to pay damages to victims of binary options scams in a notable court case in Ireland. The Irish High Court found that the Canadian-Israeli brothers David Cartu and Jonathan Cartu were shadow directors of GMM and had “syphoned off considerable sums of money.” The judge made them “personally liable” to defrauded investors.
Read more about the Irish GMM court case here.
The Rapyd Era
Then in November 2019, Israeli fintech Rapyd of Arik Shtilman announced that Sarel Tal had been appointed VP EMEA and would be responsible for the company’s strategic direction in the region. Sthilman and his partners launched CashDash in Israel in 2015 and later renamed it Rapyd.
Key Data
| Trading names | AlgoCharge AlgoPay FremainPay Seroph |
| Business activities | Payment processor Payment orchestrators |
| Domains | |
| Legal entities | AlgoPay Limited Seroph International (CY) Limited Seroph Holding BV Seroph Hong Kong Ltd Seroph Apac Ltd |
| Jurisdictions | Israel, Cyprus, Netherlands, Hong Kong |
| Related individuals | Sarel Tar (LinkedIn) Shai Hackam (LinkedIn) |
| Connections to | Rapyd, GMM, Wirecard |
Share Information
If you have any information about AlgoCharge, Seroph Group, and other companies or brands in this disappeared network, please share it with us through our whistleblower system, Whistle42.
