The ED has raided three locations of Coda Payments India Pvt Ltd for alleged unauthorized deductions from end-users of games such as Garena Free Fire and Teen Patti Gold.

New Delhi [India]Sept. 27 (ANI): The Department of Law Enforcement (ED) accuses Garena Free Fire, Teen Patti Gold, and other games of relying on unauthorized deductions from end-users (mostly unsuspecting children), A search was conducted at three premises associated with Coda Payments India Pvt Ltd. , Call of Duty and others, the agency said Tuesday.

Coda Payments India Pvt. Ltd. facilitates and collects payments from end users of these games to generate monetization and revenue for web and game publishers.

The raid was made in connection with an ongoing investigation under the 2002 Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). Coda Payments India Pvt. Ltd. and the “Garena Free Fire” mobile game.

These raids were based on multiple FIRs registered against Coda Payments India Pvt. Ltd. and the “Garena Free Fire” mobile game.

“Coda Payments India Pvt. Ltd. allegedly facilitates and collects payments from end-users (mostly unsuspecting children) of games such as Garena Free Fire, Teen Patti Gold and Call of Duty. It is said that web and game publishers make unauthorized deductions from the end users of these games under the guise of selling them digital tokens that they use to enhance their playing experience with the games. We are relying on ,” ED said in a statement. .

Additionally, game developers such as Garena and Coda Payments India Pvt Ltd deliberately tweak their payment mechanisms so that after the first successful transaction, a notification pops up asking for permission to make subsequent payments without authentication. It is claimed to have designed

Children are unaware of these technical terms, so simply clicking on a notification in the usual way authorizes them to make all future payments without further verification, the ED said. increase.

“Free Fire publisher Garena has no company or presence in India and operates out of Singapore,” the ED further said.

During the course of the investigation, it was discovered that Coda Payments India Pvt Ltd was set up as an agent for Coda Payments Singapore Pte Ltd solely to collect money from users and transfer it to the parent company, ED said.

“Coda Payments India Pvt. Ltd. has collected money under the guise of selling digital content and transferred it to its parent company in Singapore under the guise of selling and purchasing digital content, but the tokens are controlled solely by Coda Singapore. , there is no actual sale or purchase of digital content by CPIPL,” the agency said.

“This is only a conduit for transferring funds out of India. The amount collected by the CPIPL to date is 2,850 kroner, of which 2,265 kroner has been used to pay a percentage of the proceeds for the payment of taxes. Transferred out of India after being held Collected through unauthorized deductions from unsuspecting customer accounts, all bank accounts, payment gateway merchant IDs, CPIPL time deposits with balance as of date Rs 68.53 billion was frozen under the PMLA in 2002 to prevent criminal proceeds from being alienated by the company,” the agency added. (ANI)