Nuvei Corporation will pay $4.85 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that the payment processor kept opening and maintaining accounts for merchants it knew or should have known were running deceptive schemes, the agency announced on September 4, 2026. Among those merchants was Reimage, an offshore tech support operation that took more than $30 million from consumers between 2017 and 2023 while Nuvei kept clearing its charges. The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona against the Canada-based company and four of its subsidiaries.
Regulators allege that Nuvei routed Reimage’s credit card charges through a merchant acquiring bank registered in Cyprus, a structure that let the scheme keep billing cardholders in the United States and elsewhere long after warning signs surfaced. The firm is also accused of opening accounts for a business-opportunity seller, a company impersonating a government tax authority, and merchants that other processors had already cut off for excessive chargebacks or fraud.
The Reimage Tech Support Scheme
Reimage marketed itself as a computer repair service, but the FTC’s complaint describes an operation that lured consumers with fake virus alerts designed to look like they came from Microsoft, then pushed them toward offshore call centers selling remote tech support and recurring software charges. The FTC already settled with the operators of Reimage in 2024, requiring them to pay $26 million over the same underlying scheme, and last year it separately sued a Europe-based payment processor, Paddle, over allegations that its merchant-of-record platform helped Reimage collect the same charges; Paddle agreed to pay $5 million to resolve that case.
Nuvei’s alleged contribution was keeping the payment pipeline open. Its subsidiary in the United States, Nuvei Technologies Inc., held the Reimage account directly, while a Cyprus-registered acquiring bank elsewhere in the corporate structure allowed the recurring charges to keep clearing across borders even as the scheme’s tactics became known within the industry.
The complaint names four subsidiaries alongside the parent company — Nuvei International Group Limited, Nuvei Limited, SafeCharge Digital Limited and Nuvei Technologies Inc. — a corporate structure spanning Canada, Cyprus and the United States that, according to the FTC, let a single tech support scheme funnel its charges through multiple layers before they reached a cardholder’s statement.
A Visa Warning Nuvei Didn’t Heed
Card network Visa flagged Reimage to Nuvei in 2020, warning that the merchant was impersonating Microsoft with fake virus pop-ups to steer consumers toward its call centers, and fined Nuvei over the referral. Rather than closing the account, the FTC alleges, Nuvei expanded its processing for Reimage’s recurring support and software charges in the years that followed.
Bureau of Consumer Protection director Christopher Mufarrige framed the case as a message to the wider payments industry, saying the action reflects the Commission’s commitment to keeping the payments system free of fraud. Consumers and businesses, he said in the FTC’s announcement, deserve a payment system that stays competitive, transparent and “fortified against fraud.”
New Screening Requirements Under the Order
The order tied to the settlement bars Nuvei from providing payment services to anyone selling tech support products through telemarketing calls or pop-up messages about device security or performance — the exact sales channel Reimage used. It also prohibits the company from making false statements to obtain merchant accounts and from using tactics such as load balancing to dodge the fraud-monitoring programs that banks and card networks run.
Load balancing — spreading a single merchant’s transactions across several accounts so that none of them individually crosses the chargeback thresholds that trigger a bank’s fraud review — is the specific evasion tactic the order singles out, according to the FTC’s filing. Regulators say tactics like it let a flagged merchant keep operating under the radar even after one processing relationship draws scrutiny.
Beyond the bans, Nuvei must screen and monitor both existing and prospective clients, with heightened scrutiny for merchant categories such as outbound telemarketing, and investigate any client whose chargeback rate crosses the thresholds the order sets. The Commission voted 2-0 to authorize the complaint and the proposed order.
Russell Deitch and Sung W. Kim, attorneys in the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, led the matter on the agency’s side. Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson and Commissioner Mark R. Meador went further than the standard press release, issuing a separate joint statement that addressed the case in more detail alongside the settlement announcement.
Other Merchants Nuvei Serviced
The FTC’s complaint says Nuvei’s screening lapses reached beyond Reimage. Its subsidiary in the United States also opened accounts for DK Automation, a business-opportunity seller the agency sued in November 2022 over earnings claims tied to Amazon storefronts and cryptocurrency trading that regulators said were fabricated, and for American Tax Service, a company the agency and the state of Nevada sued in October 2025 for posing as a government tax authority to collect payments from people who believed they owed back taxes.
Some accounts, the complaint adds, belonged to merchants that other payment processors or banks had already terminated for excessive chargebacks or fraud before Nuvei agreed to process for them. The $4.85 million penalty is earmarked for consumer redress, and the case remains before the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, where a judge will decide whether to approve the order the Commission negotiated.
Eligible consumers will be notified by mail once the redress fund is distributed, and the agency’s standard guidance applies in the meantime: the FTC says it will never call demanding payment, threaten consumers, or promise a prize in connection with a refund, guidance meant to head off anyone posing as the agency during the payout process.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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