I'm posting what I have learnt here about ISX merchants so that...

I'm posting what I have learnt here about ISX merchants so that others can assess it and then conduct their own further research if they so choose to, including providing alternate views and thoughts.  I want people to be able to truly determine what sort of payments company ISX is - rather than just solely rely on how management portray ISX.

The information I have gathered and will post here is independent of company announcements but is publicly available to find on the internet. Some of it is a bit technical. I've tried to explain it as simply as I can but feel free to ask questions if it doesn't make sense.

Some time ago I started looking at websites such as similarweb.com and semrush.com to have a closer look at the isignthis.com website. What resulted was me stumbling onto a part of the ISX website that appeared to deal with processing/verifying of payments. It also identified a way in which to work out if ISX has/had a relationship/integration with various merchants and it centres around sub-domains of the isignthis.com website.

The formula to follow is:

merchantname-verify.isignthis.com

For example, if you wanted to check if FP Markets was a customer of ISX - you could check this by typing in the following:

fpmarkets-verify.isignthis.com

If when typing in the web address it takes you to a landing page called 'Search Transaction' then the merchant is or at least has been a customer of iSignthis. If it comes back with a page not found then the merchant you have tried is not a customer, or at the very least, the way you have typed/spelt the merchant's name in is different to how ISX have set up the merchant's name. Now the above is no guarantee that the merchant is an active customer or even still a customer at all. I think all it tells us is that they at the very least have been a customer at some stage or commenced a relationship with ISX.

Now taking the above one step further, I have closely monitored website traffic for isignthis.com and its subdomains. The traffic broadly moved with changes in GPTV as it was being reported through 2019. As GPTV was increasing, so was traffic to these subdomains of the isignthis.com website. As GPTV has reportedly slowed since suspension, so has the traffic.

I accept that this is a blunt tool and their are a number of variables at play, but it does appear to provide at the very least a rough gauge of transaction volumes being processed. Further, if we take that each "hit" on these sub-domains represents a transaction, we still don't know the value of each transaction. So a merchant/s may make up a large number of transactions but if they are small transactions, they may not contribute as much GPTV as another merchant that has less but larger $ value transactions. Readers here need to be aware of that.

None the less, it is data that I believe still provides meaningful insight.

I'll attached a screen grab of recent traffic data for February 2020 provided by semrush.com to the following post as I'm having difficulty attaching to this post. The top% of website sub domain traffic have been merchants for quite some time, at least 8-9 months from my previous reviews of traffic from month to month.

Total traffic hits/visits to isignthis.com (including subdomains) for Feb 2020 - 122,800.

Top 5 traffic hits/visits via subdomain to isignthis.com:

	Column 1	Column 2	Column 3	Column 4
0	Subdomain	All devices	Desktop	Mobile
1	cyberboosts-verify.isignthis.com	39.4K	13.72%	86.28%
2	giftergo-verify.isignthis.com	37.2K	37.52%	62.48%
3	thetreasureboosts-verify.isignthis.com	26.4K	5.91%	94.09%
4	yourvictoryvault-verify.isignthis.com	5.8K	17.91%	82.09%
5	thebonusboosts-verify.isignthis.com	3.2K	80.26%	19.74%

So of the 122,800 total hits/visits to iSignthis website, 112,000 hits/visits are made from the above 5 merchant subdomains or 91% of total website traffic for February 2020.

Remember that the last reported GPTV figure from the company was $2.25b annualised, or $187.5mil a month or $6.16m a day, every day. Now that GPTV figure that was last reported was inclusive of EMA inflows as well but none the less, lots of money being processed, every single day.

Now when coming across the above data many months ago, I was not even able to find websites for these merchants but when searching again a few weeks ago, I was able to find their websites had become locateable:

https://www.cyberboosts.com/

https://gifter-go.net/

https://www.thetreasureboosts.com/

https://yourvictoryvault.com/

https://www.thebonusboosts.com/

Four out of the five appear to be 'Gold Farmers' for MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) such as Warcraft and the like. That is where people acquire in game credits/tokens/gold etc and then on sell those tokens via websites to gamers for who want to be able to level up more quickly in games.

Each of the above 'Gold Farmer' merchant websites are similar in both the layouts of their pages but also their 'About Us', 'Privacy' and 'Terms' pages are very similar. They all appear to have companies registered in the UK and I've commenced having a closer look at those companies and their directors, including the registered addresses for each company - which appear to be residential houses.

The other merchant in the Top 5 for hits/visits to the isignthis.com website is an online gift card merchant again with a company registered in the UK to a residential address.

None of the above five merchants are using the Paydentity patented split payment system. They just use a standard payments gateway with MasterCard Securecode - just like FPMarkets ISX payment gateway uses Mastercard Securecode too.

Given how Paydentity and the KYC patents are presented as almost revolutionary, I find it odd that I cannot find a single merchant that uses the split payment KYC method. Further, it appears on the face of it, if giving the website traffic data some credence, that most of ISX transactions are MMORPG 'Gold Farmers'.

MMORPG 'Gold Farmers' are non regulated payments, but in my view still present as a high risk area of business and one that warrants regulation to prevent the MMORPG industry being used for money laundering. Below are links to examples of where 'Gold Farmers' have been linked to money laundering syndicates.

https://www.engadget.com/2008/10/25/gold-farmers-connected-with-$-38-million-money-laundering-bust/

https://massivelyop.com/2019/08/09/...ing-and-micro-laundering-in-the-mmo-industry/

https://www.pcgamer.com/how-microtransactions-and-in-game-currencies-can-be-used-to-launder-money/

Now let me make it clear that I am not saying that ISX or their merchants are involved in money laundering.

What I am saying is that ISX appears to have a significant proportion of their business tied to MMORPG. This sector, in my opinion,  is the "retail" aspect of ISX' business that they talk about, rather than "regulated" parts of ISX customers being FX/CFDs etc. I still see this as a high risk sector, despite it not being regulated as one at this point in time.

Make what you will of the above information. It is all publicly available for those that wish to look into it more. As I mention above, having reviewed the above traffic data for some time, I think it has some degree of accuracy, but would caution people not to put overwhelming weight on it.

I think it does though, give readers here a better insight into the business that ISX is.

In my opinion, this is no Paypal Ver 2 or some high tech neo-bank that we are invested in. I think the quality of the above merchants highlights that.

I just want to be shown ONE merchant that uses the ISX split payment patented KYC process. After all, that's what gets presented to investors as the disruptive game changing tech.

All of the above is my opinion only based on my own research. Conduct your own research and come to your own views.