Thanks everyone for your comments and all the information you are providing with regard to this unfortunate situation. For our part here at Envato, we have been in contact with Payoneer today to hear directly from them what is happening and what they are doing.
What we know is that the company Wirecard AG has declared bankruptcy and as a precautionary measure, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the UK has frozen the accounts of its UK subsidiary Wirecard Card Solutions Limited. This is done to protect the funds of individuals. As Payoneer is using Wirecard’s UK subsidiary to issue Payoneer Prepaid Mastercards, anyone using these cards is likely impacted by this freeze.
Payoneer and Wirecard Card Solutions Limited (the UK subsidiary) are working with the FCA to unlock funds as quickly as possible. However, Payoneer has not informed us when the frozen funds will be unlocked. The priority for the FCA is to ensure that all funds are protected and made available exclusively to the individuals they belong to.
Payoneer has created a blog post which they are regularly updating with details and answers to specific questions as they learn more. Current updates are also available on the Payoneer Facebook page here.
You can continue to have money sent to your Payoneer account. Funds will not be loaded to the card while the card program is frozen, but you can withdraw any funds from your Payoneer account directly to a nominated bank account. Alternatively, you can have them held in your Payoneer account until the card program is available.
While the FCA process continues, Envato is taking additional steps to support authors in managing their payouts. Authors, whose payout method is Payoneer and linked to a card may now request a payout hold for one month. To do this, please follow this link to submit a ticket and our team will process the request as quickly as possible. Please note that if you make a request to hold your payout, you will not be able to cancel that request.
For Studio payouts the ticket must be received by 5 July 2020.
For Market and Elements payouts the ticket must be received by 10 July 2020.
If you would like to change your payout method, all existing deadlines remain in place. This means that you must make the change to your payment method before midnight 30 June 2020 AEST (Australian Eastern Standard Time).
We will continue to monitor the situation and recommend that you regularly check Payoneer’s website for up-to-date information.