E-Clear payment processing contract 'ended in December 2008'

A contract between under-fire credit card processing intermediary E-Clear and a payments processing firm backed by Deutsche Bank ended last December, documents seen by Travel Weekly have revealed.

Pago managing director Markus Weber wrote to E-Clear customers last September saying that an original date for the expiry of a contract to process "card not present" transactions with E-Clear at the end of August had been extended to December 15 but that no payments would be processed under the existing agreement after that date.

A previous letter from E-Clear chief executive Elias Elia dated July 29, 2008, stated E-Clear would soon start processing payments through a new banking facility. The letter said this was part of a process of improving the services to clients by migrating to a "superior platform".

However, clients Travel Weekly have spoken to have said they found it difficult to get details from E-Clear about this new banking facility other than that they were told E-Clear was in the process of buying a small German bank.

According to E-Clear's latest accounts posted at Companies House the firm owns Bremen-based Nord Finanz Bank of which senior City financier and Labour party donor Derek Tullett was a director and significant shareholder.

This week The Times also revealed that Tullett sits on the E-Clear advisory board and was personally involved in the aftermath when Scottish operator and E-Clear client Globespan went out of business two weeks ago.

That failure, and subsequent collapse of Allbury Travel Group, with which E-Clear and Elia also had close ties through its offshore parent company, has thrown the spotlight on E-Clear and its role with senior Scottish politicians calling for an investigation.

Globespan administrators PricewaterhouseCoopers have requested E-Clear place the £35 million of customer payments it has held back into a joint account while it completes its work.

When Travel Weekly spoke exclusively to Elia last week he would not go into details about the firm's banking arrangements saying it was a confidential commercial issue, but it is understood Deutche Bank no longer acts as financial guarantor for E-Clear business. The firm processed £780 million of transactions in the year to March 2008 according to its latest available accounts.