Internal Document Suggests Wirecard Depended Upon Few Clients For Majority Of Sales

A summary of Wirecard’s customers in 2017 suggests that just 100 clients represented over 50 percent of its real sales, the Financial Times reported, citing an internal spreadsheet.

The firm reportedly said it worked with 170,000 small companies and 33,000 large and medium-sized merchants in 2017. However, the internal document hints that the firm’s client base was significantly less sizable and the revenue from it much more uneven, per the report viewed by FT.

The news outlet reports that “thousands” of client names seem to be represented more than once. A spreadsheet that was said to be distributed among 10 staffers in 2017 displayed 107,000 customers.

The FT did not include in its examination six Indonesian companies that reportedly made an unlikely €190 billion in transactions, supposedly resulting in €200,000 in sales. FT surmises that the incorrect currency could have been utilized.

Excluding those figures, the spreadsheet shows €292 million in sales from transactions of €18 billion. However, Wirecard indicated €616 million in revenue from payments of €37.9 billion at the time per FT.

An attorney for former CEO Markus Braun indicated per the report that “the assumptions and imputations” in the outlet’s questions regarding the document were not understandable to his client and “obviously based on information taken wholly out of context.”

On June 30, Wirecard AG received approval to restart its British banking operations as financial regulators took away restrictions that had been put on the German payments firm following an auditor’s report that revealed missing funds. The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) gave consent for Wirecard Card Solutions to open again.

And a number of regulators had reportedly held talks over time about strengthening supervision over Wirecard or putting it on a list of possible subjects for further probes, but all reportedly decided not to per Reuters.

In addition, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is working with authorities to probe Wirecard AG. The Commercial Affairs Department (CAD) of Singapore has been looking into the company’s Singapore operations for 16 months.