The Financial Supervisory Authority of Norway has written to Ski-VM Trondheim 2025 AS concluding that the event organiser’s payment arrangement for local food sales during the Ski World Championships constituted a regulated payment service and was offered without the required licence. Under the arrangement, local food producers sold from stands on their own account, while Ski-VM took a percentage commission. Sellers were instructed to use payment terminals distributed by Ski-VM, with the full sales amounts paid into Ski-VM’s operating account and to be settled to sellers after the event net of commission. Finanstilsynet assessed this as “money remittance” or the receipt and transfer of funds without a payment account relationship, because Ski-VM received buyers’ funds for onward transfer to the sellers. It noted that CoreGo (terminal supplier) and BankAxept (payment system) were not relevant to whether Ski-VM provided payment services, and that Verifone’s licence as a Finnish payment institution covered card payments into Ski-VM’s account but not Ski-VM’s subsequent holding and onward transfer of the proceeds. The authority also highlighted that simply using a separate account would not provide adequate protection in insolvency unless funds were identifiable and segregated in a dedicated client account, which banks typically require a statutory segregation obligation to establish. Finanstilsynet considered the breach serious but, after a specific assessment, decided not to file a police report in this case, while warning that reporting could be an expected response in other instances of unlicensed payment services. It also flagged concerns that similar solutions may have been used at other events and said it will contact the Norwegian Sports Federation to discuss how to avoid unlawful practices going forward.

Original source View in tracker