Christian Steinmetz, the bankruptcy receiver for Cyberservices Europe, said this week that reopened bankruptcy proceedings were advancing, but final resolution of the failed online payments firm “will take much longer than expected”. Photo credit: steinmetz-avocat.lu

Christian Steinmetz, the bankruptcy receiver for Cyberservices Europe, said this week that reopened bankruptcy proceedings were advancing, but final resolution of the failed online payments firm “will take much longer than expected”. Photo credit: steinmetz-avocat.lu

The bankruptcy process for the failed electronic payments firm Cyberservices Europe, which had been halted during an appeal last year, has been reactivated and is still very much in progress, its bankruptcy receiver has said.

In a recent update to claimants, , the court-appointed administer, said his law firm faced a growing backlog of customer claims and that Cyberservices Europe itself has “a considerable claim” against the collapsed German financial outfit Wirecard.

Luxembourg-based Cyberservices Europe operated the Klik & Play online payments system, which was by the Luxembourg financial regulator CSSF in 2019 for failing to comply with the payment services law. The company was initially declared in 2020. However, the process was suspended during an appeal. A fresh judgment restarting its bankruptcy procedure was issued on 15 July 2021.

Around 250 claims

Up till now, “some 250 claims have been filed with the bankruptcy estate”, Steinmetz on 15 March 2022. Those “creditors do not have to file their claims once again” as all correctly filed claims “have been registered and will be reviewed one by one by the receiver.”

“The process of reviewing all such claims will still take a considerable amount of time as a large number of payment service users, when filing their claims, either have not followed fully or have not followed at all the instructions as detailed very precisely though on the claim registration form provided by the receiver on his website,” Steinmetz wrote in his update. Several claimants have lodged multiple requests for the same claim or submitted incomplete paperwork, he commented.

“Any kind of dividend payments will be possibly only once” all filings have been fully verified.

Asset recovery efforts

There is also the question of recouping assets. “The receiver has managed to recover several amounts sitting in accounts held with a local bank”, Steinmetz stated. Separately, there was evidence that Cyberservices “has a considerable claim against” Wirecard, which is currently in bankruptcy proceedings in Germany. “A claim will be filed with that bankruptcy estate.” Regaining those funds could be tricky, since Wirecard has been engulfed by allegations of massive international accounting .

Steinmetz added that Cyberservices Europe “has a considerable claim against its sole shareholder”, Cyberservices SA, a Swiss firm which was declared bankrupt last year.

Information on the Cyberservices Europe bankruptcy process and instructions on how to file a claim can found on the Steinmetz law firm .

Klik & Pay was an e-commerce payment platform that had many smaller merchants as clients.