Online payment platforms are digital services enabling individuals and businesses to conduct electronic transactions over the internet. They often integrate with bank accounts, credit cards, digital wallets, or electronic money solutions, allowing users to send or receive funds in various currencies. These platforms may also provide additional financial management features, advanced technology solutions, and peer-to-peer transfer capabilities for enhanced accessibility and convenience.
Main/
Online Payment Platforms
[]
Code
PS0131
[]
Name
Online Payment Platforms
[]
Version
1.0
[]
Category
Payment, Transfer & Remittance Services
[]
Created
2025-03-14
[]
Modified
2025-04-02
Related Techniques
- Mules create or control accounts on these platforms, receiving funds under personal or fabricated identities.
- Instant transfers and low threshold to set up accounts facilitate rapid layering of proceeds.
- Criminals exploit lax verification by accessing accounts over open WiFi, masking user identities behind shared IP addresses.
- Unusual transaction spikes from transient devices remain undetected due to high turnover of users on the same public network.
- By routing traffic through multiple VPN servers, criminals obscure their real geographical origin, undermining geolocation-based risk assessments.
- Rapid switching between VPN nodes creates transaction trails across unrelated jurisdictions, complicating AML monitoring and investigations.
- Enables repeated micro transactions across different merchant accounts or user IDs, making it challenging to detect total amounts.
- Accessible globally, allowing cross-border layering in small increments often viewed as routine e-commerce activity.
- By integrating mobile and web-based payment channels, criminals execute numerous micro-transactions or refunds, complicating any transactional review.
- Frictionless payment setups allow the quick injection or extraction of illicit funds, circumventing traditional banking scrutiny.
- Fraudsters execute recurring micro-transactions across different user accounts to see where abnormal usage or fraud detection triggers arise.
- The ability to send payments globally aids iterative testing of alert thresholds.
- Forced or coerced adult content subscriptions and escort services can be billed through mainstream online payment portals, disguised as standard service fees.
- Layering and splitting transactions across multiple accounts confounds AML monitoring, concealing the true nature of these funds.
- These platforms offer quick dispute processes with minimal friction, which criminals exploit by claiming delivery issues, defective products, or billing errors.
- The anonymized or semi-anonymized user accounts enable the layering of refunds, obscuring the illicit source of funds.
- Provide rapid, user-controlled fund exchanges with relatively lower onboarding scrutiny.
- Criminals leverage these platforms to conduct quick, successive transfers among accounts, distancing illicit proceeds from their origin.
- Criminals guide victims to receive and send funds via online payment platforms, benefiting from limited face-to-face verification.
- Linking multiple accounts across different platforms obscures transaction records, feeding the layering process and evading AML detection.
- Facilitating rapid digital transfers, these platforms let traffickers move funds under the guise of legitimate e-commerce or service payments.
- Layering strategies can involve multiple low-value transactions staggered to evade transaction monitoring systems.
- Enable quick electronic payments to foreign chemical suppliers via digital channels, reducing transparency around fund flows.
- Support layering by allowing multiple or frequent small transactions, making it more difficult for authorities to identify suspect payment patterns.
- Facilitate rapid payment processing for counterfeit pharmaceutical transactions, often lacking robust KYC/AML controls.
- Criminals can mislabel products or transactions, obscuring the illicit nature of proceeds, and exploit chargebacks or refunds to further mask the flow of funds.
- Advance Fee Fraud operators instruct victims to submit fees using popular online payment portals, citing convenience and speed to coax rapid compliance.
- After receipt, criminals transfer funds to various linked accounts or digital wallets, exploiting platform features that mask origin and beneficiary details.
- Perpetrators set up accounts on popular online payment systems to solicit 'release fees' under the façade of legitimate lottery organizations.
- Rapid onboarding and global reach enable them to receive payments from multiple victims and move funds quickly.