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Zeux - Payments & Investing

Latest release: 2.20.0 ( 7th October 2021 ) 🔍 Last analysed 2nd November 2022 . Custodial: The provider holds the keys Not updated in a while
4.2 ★★★★★
1655 ratings
10 thousand
22nd May 2019

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Help spread awareness for build reproducibility

Please help us spread the word discussing the risks of centralized custodians with Zeux - Payments & Investing  via their Twitter!

Do your own research!

Try out searching for "lost bitcoins", "stole my money" or "scammers" together with the wallet's name, even if you think the wallet is generally trustworthy. For all the bigger wallets you will find accusations. Make sure you understand why they were made and if you are comfortable with the provider's reaction.

If you find something we should include, you can create an issue or edit this analysis yourself and create a merge request for your changes.

The Analysis 

Updated Analysis 2022-01-06

The Google Play app is accessible and was last updated on 2021-10-07. (Twitter Screenshot)

The iOS version of the app is also accessible and was last updated on 2021-11-09. (Twitter Screenshot)

Additional Information About Zeux’s Crypto Wallet

Under its Terms and Conditions:

Section 16.3 In order to convert cryptocurrency into fiat currency, cryptocurrency will need to be sent to the unique wallet address created for you in your Zeux account; or fiat currency will need to be sent to your Zeux account.

Section 16.5 Once the conversion rate has been confirmed by you to your account manager, your cryptocurrency will be converted to the corresponding fiat currency to the account selected by you. It can either be your Zeux account, or any other bank account in your name. Or your fiat currency in your Zeux account will be converted to the corresponding cryptocurrency to your Zeux crypto wallet.

Previous Analysis

Zeux is a UK-only payment app that combines fiat and cryptocurrencies. It also provides banking and investment onramps.

  • See your cash, crypto and bank balances in one place
  • Pay, send and receive money instantly
  • Pay at any store with Apple Pay and Samsung Pay
  • Transfer money to your friends and family in just a few taps

We downloaded the app, and tried registering a UK number but it gave out an error:

“We currently do not accept new registrations”

We checked the Zeux Terms and Conditions to gather more information:

In section 12.3 “Payment via funds converted from cryptocurrency”, it mentions

In order to make purchases via funds converted from cryptocurrency, cryptocurrency will need to be sent to the unique wallet address created for you in your Zeux account
The wallet address is unique to you and may be used to store, send and receive cryptocurrency
Depending on the region and status, each customer will have a unique crypto wallet created for them. The following cryptocurrencies are supported:
Bitcoin (BTC), etc.

Section 13 discusses fiat to cryptocurrency conversions and vice versa.

In order to convert cryptocurrency into fiat currency, cryptocurrency will need to be sent to the unique wallet address created for you in your Zeux account; or fiat currency will need to be sent to your Zeux account.

News

Apparently, Zeux has run into some regulatory concerns back in January 2020, with the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority):

In January 2020 the fintech was ordered to remove ads promoting a 5 per cent interest rate for its “savings account alternative” after This is Money reported that the fintech was taking money deposited into savings accounts and converting it to cryptocurrency through its partner Tunaikita.
Tunaikita would then convert the cryptocurrency back into normal currency and lend it out to borrowers—keep in mind that Zeux, while regulated by the FCA, is not protected under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) so customer’s money was (and still is) at risk.

This may explain why they are no longer accepting new registrations.

Though this may be the case, other recent news accounts indicate that the company is still operating. This may mean that it has an existing customer base.

Reach out and Verdict

It’s been 8 days since we emailed Zeux at support@zeux.com, but they still haven’t replied. We also cannot find other social media, so it is more prudent to label this project as defunct

(dg)

Verdict Explained

As the provider of this product holds the keys, verifiability of the product is not relevant to the security of the funds!

As part of our Methodology, we ask:

Custodial!

Is the product self-custodial?

If the answer is "no", we mark it as "Custodial: The provider holds the keys".

A custodial service is a service where the funds are held by a third party like the provider. The custodial service can at any point steal all the funds of all the users at their discretion. Our investigations stop there.

Some services might claim their setup is super secure, that they don’t actually have access to the funds, or that the access is shared between multiple parties. For our evaluation of it being a wallet, these details are irrelevant. They might be a trustworthy Bitcoin bank and they might be a better fit for certain users than being your own bank but our investigation still stops there as we are only interested in wallets.

Products that claim to be non-custodial but feature custodial accounts without very clearly marking those as custodial are also considered “custodial” as a whole to avoid misguiding users that follow our assessment.

This verdict means that the provider might or might not publish source code and maybe it is even possible to reproduce the build from the source code but as it is custodial, the provider already has control over the funds, so it is not a wallet where you would be in exclusive control of your funds.

We have to acknowledge that a huge majority of Bitcoiners are currently using custodial Bitcoin banks. If you do, please:

  • Do your own research if the provider is trust-worthy!
  • Check if you know at least enough about them so you can sue them when you have to!
  • Check if the provider is under a jurisdiction that will allow them to release your funds when you need them?
  • Check if the provider is taking security measures proportional to the amount of funds secured? If they have a million users and don’t use cold storage, that hot wallet is a million times more valuable for hackers to attack. A million times more effort will be taken by hackers to infiltrate their security systems.

But we also ask:

Stale!

Was the product updated during the last year?

If the answer is "no", we mark it as "Not updated in a while".

Bitcoin wallets are complex products and Bitcoin is a new, advancing technolgy. Projects that don’t get updated in a year are probably not well maintained.

This verdict may not get applied if the provider is active and expresses good reasons for not updating the product.

The product cannot be independently verified. If the provider puts your funds at risk on purpose or by accident, you will probably not know about the issue before people start losing money. If the provider is more criminally inclined he might have collected all the backups of all the wallets, ready to be emptied at the press of a button. The product might have a formidable track record but out of distress or change in management turns out to be evil from some point on, with nobody outside ever knowing before it is too late.