Chances are you’ve never heard of Nuvei, and that’s exactly the point of what it does. It’s a payment processor — one of the companies working quietly behind the scenes whenever you type in a card number online, deciding whether that charge actually goes through.
The FTC just said Nuvei let a lot of charges go through that never should have, and the settlement behind that decision tells you something worth knowing about how scam operations actually get your money in the first place.
What the FTC actually alleged
According to the FTC’s announcement, Nuvei Corporation and its subsidiaries knowingly opened and maintained payment accounts for merchants engaged in deceptive practices. The agency says the company processed more than $30 million in consumer payments tied to fraudulent schemes between 2017 and 2023.
That’s not a company failing to notice a handful of bad actors slipping through. Six years and $30 million is a pattern, according to the FTC’s complaint — not an isolated lapse.
The settlement resolves the complaint without Nuvei admitting wrongdoing, which is standard for this kind of case. The FTC’s vote to move forward was 2-0.
The three named merchants behind the case
The FTC’s complaint names specific merchants Nuvei processed payments for. Reimage ran an offshore tech-support scam targeting U.S. consumers. DK Automation sold business opportunities built on false earnings claims. American Tax Service impersonated government tax authorities.
Three very different scam categories, all running through the same payment pipeline. That’s worth sitting with, because it suggests the failure wasn’t specific to one type of fraud — it was in how Nuvei screened who it did business with at all.
The complaint also references other merchants that had already been terminated by different payment processors for excessive chargebacks or fraud, before landing with Nuvei anyway.
What “tech-support scam” actually looks like
Reimage’s category is one you’ve likely encountered in some form, even if you didn’t fall for it. According to the FTC’s consumer guidance, legitimate tech companies don’t call, text, or email you out of nowhere to say there’s a problem with your computer.
The scam usually starts with a pop-up warning that looks like it’s from a real company, urging you to call a number for help. Once you’re on the phone, the scammer asks for remote access to your computer and claims to find viruses or problems that need immediate — and expensive — fixing.
Payment demands are a tell of their own: gift cards, wire transfers, cryptocurrency, or payment apps, specifically because those methods make refunds difficult once the money’s gone.
How a merchant like this gets a payment account at all
Payment processors are supposed to vet who they let use their systems — checking a business’s legitimacy before approving it to accept card payments, and monitoring for red flags like unusually high chargeback rates afterward.
The FTC’s complaint describes Nuvei using a tactic called “load balancing” to evade fraud-monitoring systems — spreading a merchant’s transaction volume across multiple accounts or channels so no single one triggers the red flags that would normally get a high-risk business flagged for review.
If that sounds technical, the plain-language version is simpler: the complaint alleges the company had tools that could have caught this, and structured its own processes in a way that avoided using them effectively.
What Nuvei is now required to do
The settlement bars Nuvei from providing payment services to anyone selling tech-support products through telemarketing or pop-up messages — cutting off the exact channel Reimage used, by category, not just by name.
It also prohibits Nuvei from accepting false statements from merchants trying to open accounts, requires enhanced screening and monitoring of clients in high-risk categories like telemarketing, and mandates deeper investigation of any client with an excessive chargeback rate.
Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said the action “underscores the Commission’s commitment to ensuring that our payments system operates free of fraud” — a statement aimed less at Nuvei specifically and more at the processing industry watching how this case turned out.
The $4.85 million, and where it goes
Nuvei will pay $4.85 million, designated for consumer redress — money set aside to go back to people affected by the fraudulent schemes the company’s payment accounts helped process.
That figure is a fraction of the $30 million-plus in flagged transactions the complaint describes, which is a common gap in settlements like this one. Redress funds rarely make every affected consumer whole; they’re a partial remedy layered on top of the behavioral changes the settlement also requires.
Neither the settlement nor this reporting should be read as a promise that a specific consumer will get money back — that depends on separate claims processes the FTC typically announces later.
Why this matters even if you’ve never used Nuvei directly
You don’t choose your payment processor when you buy something online — the merchant does, and you never see the name unless something goes wrong. That’s exactly why a case like this matters beyond the specific merchants named in it.
If a processor’s screening is weak, a scam operation doesn’t need to trick a bank directly. It just needs to find a processor willing to look the other way, and start collecting card numbers from people who have no way of knowing which processor is standing behind the “pay now” button they clicked.
What actually protects you, given that
You can’t audit a merchant’s payment processor before you buy something, and you shouldn’t have to. What you can control is how you respond to unsolicited tech-support contact — the FTC’s guidance is direct: legitimate companies don’t cold-call you about problems with your device, and any request to pay by gift card, wire transfer, or cryptocurrency is a red flag regardless of how official the caller sounds.
If you’ve already paid someone in a situation like this, checking your accounts for unauthorized charges and reporting them to your bank comes first. Updating any passwords you may have shared or that were exposed during remote access comes right after.
Where to report it if it happens to you
The FTC’s own advice is to file a report at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, even if you didn’t lose money — reports like that are part of how the agency builds cases against processors and merchants exactly like the ones named in this settlement.
It’s reporting, not a guarantee of a quick fix. But this case is a reminder that those reports do eventually add up to action — the FTC’s complaint against Nuvei was built on a pattern spanning years, which means the paper trail from individual complaints matters more than any one of them might feel like it does in the moment.
This content was created with the help of AI.