FTC settles with payment processor Nuvei over $4.85 million for allegedly enabling merchant fraud

The Federal Trade Commission reached a $4.85 million settlement with global payment processor Nuvei on September 4, resolving allegations that the company facilitated merchant fraud by opening and maintaining payment-processing accounts for merchants it knew or should have known were engaged in deceptive practices.

According to the FTC's complaint, the conduct at issue included processing payments for tech-support scam operations, among them a scheme run under the name Reimage. Tech-support scams typically involve alarming pop-ups or calls telling consumers their device is compromised, then charging them for unnecessary or fake repair services — a fraud category the FTC has pursued against both the scammers themselves and the payment processors that keep their transactions running.

The settlement funds are designated for consumer redress, meaning the money is intended to go toward compensating people harmed by the underlying fraudulent charges rather than functioning as a general penalty paid to the government.

Beyond the payment, the settlement requires Nuvei to implement enhanced screening and ongoing monitoring of its merchant clients, and permanently bars the company from providing payment-processing services to certain categories of high-risk tech-support merchants going forward. Payment processors sit in a position similar to the partner-bank role in banking-as-a-service arrangements: they are not the party defrauding consumers directly, but regulators increasingly hold them responsible for the fraud that flows through accounts they open and maintain, on the theory that the processor is positioned to catch warning signs the end consumer cannot.

The FTC did not name additional processors or merchants under related investigation in its announcement, and Nuvei's settlement resolves the specific allegations in this complaint rather than establishing findings about the company's broader merchant portfolio.