In just 5 years, a little-known company called Transactive, based on the outskirts of London, has grown into a payments-industry powerhouse, processing more than $1 billion in monthly transactions. Multiple high-level employees who helped set up and run Transactive came from PacNet, a company that had to close down after being sanctioned by the US for being the “payment processor of choice” for scam artists.
Several are being targeted by authorities, including one facing federal fraud charges who remained a senior Transactive employee until just weeks ago. In June, a founding investor was sentenced to two years in jail for his part in an unrelated $1 billion healthcare fraud. Some of Transactive’s clients have also drawn scrutiny. They include Nexo Inc., a crypto-lending company recently raided by authorities in Bulgaria and fined $45 million by US authorities, a payments firm that has been probed in the UK for possible connections to financial crime, and an Irish foreign-exchange company that had its accounts shuttered several years ago on suspicion of money laundering, according to filings.