Every file on this site is produced the same way. The procedure is written down here so a reader can judge the work rather than the tone of it, and so anyone can repeat a check and reach their own conclusion.
Step one: record the claim
We read the material a visitor sees before handing over any details: the landing page, the promotional copy, the terms of use if they are reachable, the privacy notice and the registration screen. We quote what the platform says about itself and label it as the platform speaking. A claim that has been quoted has not been confirmed, and our files never blur that line.
Step two: find a legal name
Authorisation attaches to companies, not to brands, so the next task is to find a company name. The four places one should appear are the terms, the privacy notice, the page footer and the registration screen. The privacy notice matters most, because the document only means something if it identifies who controls the data.
When no name appears in any of them, the procedure stops here and the file says so. This is the single most common outcome on this site.
Step three: search the registers
With a name, we search the company register of the country claimed, confirm the entity exists and is active, and note its number. We then search the financial regulator of that country for a permission held by that exact entity covering the exact activity advertised. A company that exists is not a company that is authorised, and an authorisation for one activity does not extend to another.
Step four: search the warning lists
We check the published warning lists of supervisors that maintain them, using the company name and every spelling of the brand we have seen. A match is recorded with the name of the publishing body and the date of the notice, and it is quoted rather than paraphrased. An absence of matches is recorded as an absence on a given date and nothing more, because these lists cover only the firms a particular supervisor has chosen to name.
The registers and lists we use most often are linked at the foot of every file so that a reader can run the same searches without asking us for the addresses.
Step five: the money questions
We look for the answers to four questions: who receives a deposit, under what agreement it is held, what a withdrawal requires, and what costs apply. Where the material answers them, we quote it. Where it does not, the question goes into the section of the file headed not in evidence, which is where most of them end up.
What counts as evidence
A public register entry, a supervisor's published notice, an official app store listing, or a report in a recognisable publication that we can name and date. A figure from a promotional page is evidence of the claim only, never of the fact. A statement by an anonymous reviewer, a screenshot without provenance and a number with no source are not evidence at all and do not enter a file.
Why a file closes at unknown
The verdict scale is deliberately short: unknown, ok, high and critical. We use unknown when the checks ran and returned nothing that identifies the operator, which is the honest description of most of this sector. The stronger statuses require something specific: a citable notice from a named supervisor, quoted in the file with its date. We do not escalate a verdict on the strength of an impression, a complaint we cannot verify or a pattern in a brand name.
Dates and rewrites
Each file prints the date of its last check, and that date is a promise about work performed rather than a timestamp on an edit. When something material changes, we rewrite the file and update the date. When a reader or a platform sends a correction with a source, we publish the corrected text and say what changed. Silent edits are the one thing a record of this kind cannot survive.