Disclosures
Information about PayServices Bank as an entity: our corporate registration, the nature of what we do and do not do, our deposit insurance status, and the regulatory and legal matters in which we are involved.
Corporate identity
PayServices Bank is a banking corporation organized under the laws of the State of Idaho. The entity details below are matters of public record and can be verified directly with the Idaho Secretary of State.
Boise, Idaho 83702-6140
United States
Nature of business
PayServices builds and operates financial infrastructure: a compliance protocol and a correspondent-banking network that allow verified counterparties to transact across borders. Our role is infrastructure — identity, verification, screening, oversight and settlement.
The business earns its revenue from money transmission fees and technology services. Under the terms of its regulatory approval, all deposits held by PayServices are 100% reserve deposits — held in full rather than lent out — so the institution is not funded by interest earned on deposited money.
What PayServices does not do
PayServices does not extend credit and does not make loans. It does not offer investment services, brokerage services, or wealth management. These are deliberate limits on the business, not gaps in it: the network is designed to complement financial institutions, corporations and governments rather than to compete with them.
Deposit insurance status
PayServices Bank is not insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). No funds held in connection with PayServices are FDIC-insured, and no representation to the contrary is made anywhere on this site or in any PayServices material.
Why PayServices does not carry FDIC insurance
FDIC deposit insurance exists to protect retail depositors against the failure of an institution that takes their deposits and lends those deposits out. That model — take deposits, make loans, carry the credit risk — is what deposit insurance was designed for, and it is what the insurance premium pays for.
PayServices does not operate that model. Under the terms of its regulatory approval, all deposits held by PayServices are 100% reserve deposits: they are held in full, not lent out, and not deployed into a loan book. PayServices earns its revenue from money transmission fees and technology services rather than from interest on deposits.
That distinction is the whole of it. A deposit that is never lent cannot be lost to a borrower's default, because the failure mode deposit insurance protects against — an institution unable to return deposits because those deposits are tied up in loans that have gone bad — does not arise. Funds moving through the network are moving between verified institutional counterparties as part of a transaction, not sitting in an account funding credit elsewhere.
Because a 100% reserve model does not create the risk that deposit insurance is designed to cover, PayServices does not carry it. This is a consequence of the business model rather than a workaround: the protections that matter in an infrastructure network are full reserves, verification, segregation, transparency and oversight — the money being there, and knowing who each party is, what the transaction is, and being able to evidence both — and those are built into the system itself.
Anyone evaluating PayServices should understand this clearly, and should not assume the presence of protections that do not apply. If deposit insurance is a requirement for your use case, PayServices is not the right counterparty for that particular need, and we will say so directly.
Regulatory and legal matters
Building a new category of financial institution means testing questions that existing frameworks have not settled. Some of those questions have been tested in administrative proceedings and in court. We would rather set out what these matters are than leave the record to be assembled from fragments.
Each of the matters below is part of the public record, and the underlying filings are available through the relevant courts and agencies. Where a matter remains pending, our account here is limited to the record; we do not characterize what a court or agency has not yet decided.
The Idaho Department of Finance issued a cease and desist order against PayServices Bank. PayServices contested the order through the administrative process available to it.
An administrative law judge — an independent adjudicator with jurisdiction over the matter — reviewed the order, reversed it and cancelled it. That determination is part of the administrative record.
We note this plainly because a cease and desist order is the kind of document that surfaces in a search long after its disposition does. The order was issued; it was challenged; it was reversed and cancelled.
PayServices Bank has litigation with the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco concerning access to Federal Reserve accounts and services. The matter is currently before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
The Federal Reserve System comprises twelve regional Reserve Banks, each a separate entity serving its own district. This litigation is with the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco alone. It is not litigation against the Board of Governors, against the Federal Reserve System, or against any of the other eleven Reserve Banks, none of which is a party to it.
The underlying question — on what basis a Reserve Bank may grant or withhold account access to a legally organized depository institution — is one that several institutions have brought before the federal courts, and it has not been settled uniformly.
This matter is pending. Nothing here should be read as a characterization of its merits or its likely outcome. The filings are public and speak for themselves.
PayServices is the plaintiff in this matter, not the defendant. PayServices brought the action against the Democratic Republic of the Congo to recover an investment and to enforce its interest under agreements which, PayServices alleges, the DRC has not honored.
We note the posture because litigation involving a sovereign counterparty is easily assumed to run the other way. Here it does not: PayServices is the party seeking recovery. The claims, and the agreements they rest on, are set out in the filings of record.
The matter is pending. Nothing here should be read as a characterization of its merits or its likely outcome, and the other party is entitled to make its own case in the proper forum. We will update this page as the matter is resolved.
Jurisdictional limitations
The information on this site is provided for general institutional reference. It does not constitute an offer of, or solicitation for, any product or service in any jurisdiction where such an offer or solicitation would be unlawful.
Nothing on this site constitutes legal, financial, tax or investment advice, and nothing on it creates a banking relationship, a fiduciary relationship, or any contractual obligation. Availability of the network and of any particular service depends on the applicable regulatory framework and on the outcome of onboarding and compliance review.
Inquiries
Institutional, regulatory, media and legal inquiries are handled through the formal channels of PayServices. Correspondence may be directed to the registered office, or by email.
Boise, Idaho 83702-6140
United States