Wirecard is Done. Deglobalization

Wirecard is Done

It seems the market for easy money withdrawal/deposit to different countries is coming to an end (or is this a trend toward deglobalization?).

10 years ago, when I worked remotely for an American company, I received my salary on a Payoneer card (in short, it’s a service that opened a “cell”, not a bank account, issued you a plastic MasterCard, and you could pay/withdraw money). Why this way? I didn’t want to deal with opening a legal entity, paying taxes, dealing with currency control.

Many people continue to work with this system, but in recent years, more and more difficulties have appeared - sometimes cards weren’t delivered, or something else. And now, on the wave of Wirecard’s announced bankruptcy, things have gotten even worse - some people can’t access their money.

Looking at the bigger picture, you can see that services that dealt with migrating money between countries bypassing official procedures and taxes are facing more and more difficulties. The unsuccessful launch of Facebook’s Libra, the failure of Telegram’s Gram, payment problems within WhatsApp in Brazil, the collapse of services for withdrawing crypto through plastic cards. And at the same time, services that are friendly with the state are launching payment services - within WeChat, within VK. The difference with these services is that they work in the local market, complying with all local regulator requirements. Therefore, you should not expect that Qonto, Revolut and other Eurozone neobanks will work in Russia - there are too many difficulties at the regulatory level.

And what’s the conclusion? Local players will be given more and more advantages, while global ones will have it increasingly difficult. Payments through cryptocurrencies will remain at a gray level and only in small local situations will they get into the white zone.