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Tell HN: Wise froze $40k+ in funds for 10 days and counting
156 points by ritzaco on Oct 18, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 111 comments
So I know there are a lot of stories like this and this is not the first or the last one, but Wise, my bank, froze all our main operational bank accounts last Monday. They want proof of 'the source of my funds'. I have been a client with them for over three years but apparently that does not count for anything.

I've done everything they want but their verification team is "busy" and needs "5 working days" to check what I submitted. That was 10 days ago - I'm not sure how many days per week they regard as working days.

Luckily, because I have heard of Wise, Stripe, etc doing this on a regular basis I very strictly transfer any excess funds to a real brick-and-mortar bank, but this could easily have caused huge cashflow problems if I hadn't. As it is, it's pretty hard to set up an alternative, pay contractors etc etc, but I figured it's a good reminder for others who might be going "Surely if I don't do anything wrong they won't do anything bad to me right?"

Some of the other stories have been from people who turned out to be doing things - e.g. cryptocurrency trading - where I can kind of see why their finance providers would maybe get suspicious of illegal activity. We (Ritza) just offer technical writing services, which means we get paid by a few customers around the world every month and pay out contractors also around the world. We're headquartered in the Netherlands, not Cayman Islands or Mauritius or anything dodgy, and we pay out to people mainly in South Africa.

Posting as a warning to others, but also if you know of any alternatives to Wise that serve EU businesses I am all ears. I tried Revolut Business and Airwallex and got a generic "We can't offer you services at this time and you can't appeal and we can't tell you why" rejection from both of them. I would love to know if I'm on some kind of list and how I got there if I am.

https://x.com/sixhobbits/status/1714531389326979112?s=20

https://x.com/sixhobbits/status/1713084385585504359



The current AML/CTF regulations frameworks can only lead to extremely opaque implementations and end-user experiences. For that reason alone, it makes sense to keep the bulk of your money in a place (meaning, a mainstreet financial institution) where you'll be able to get in touch with a real human and have proper ways of recourse should your account be the unfortunate target of overzealous fraud-screening algorithms. You don't want a FAANG-like random termination account procedures with anything related to your money, which is unfortunately the experience that many new-gen finance apps are delivering right now.


I don't know that this would have been any better - they have the same fraud/AML laws to comply with.


You can go to their brick-and-mortar building, say you want your money, call the police, give them a hard time even if they can't fix your issue, so they try to avoid it next time.

Pure online banking doesn't offer this option. For instance, I still even keep my printed quarter receipts just in case.

People trust technology too much, it's all well until it isn't, and you understand how much of your life you trusted to those companies.


Unfortunately, not always. I had once my account frozen by one of the UK's largest banks for days. The reason? Apparently they didn't have my mobile phone number. They never asked for it. Also, on multiple occasions their online banking was so broken that one wasn't even able to use it. The plus is that indeed, if something goes wrong, after a long time of inconvenient waiting, a human will eventually pick up the phone. The drawback is that sometimes they are so technologically broken that fixing things will take ages.

I recommend distributing even small sums of money across as many accounts as you have. Some in Revolut, some in Wise, some in a normal bank. There is a number of reasons for which access to your bank account can be blocked (fraud attempt, stolen SIM card, stolen card etc.) so the more backup you have, the better off you should be. As the person above said, keeping printed receipts might also be useful for legal purposes.


There are a particular set of AML/KYC laws for which none of that will ever help. They can’t tell you why, they can’t stop it next time. It sucks but there’s nothing any financial org can do about it.


I have a feeling they just blame those and do low effort bulk screening.


Those are the money laundering / antiterrorism bits, which are pretty hard to trigger.

The reality is that online banks rely on "AI" for their basic anti-fraud efforts much more than real banks do, and these are the results: arbitrary shutdowns and no customer service. But hey, I'm sure doing customer service wit ChatGPT will solve it (/s).


It really isn't that hard to trigger to them, the UK Sanctions List[0] is huge, and contains quite a lot of broad descriptions that doubtless result in people getting swept up in automated checks of the list. Is your name Ali Khalili? Cool, you're on the sanctions list, because that's literally all the identifying factors provided for an Iranian general. I'm sure once it flags the bank will reasonably quickly take a look at your details and realise you're not in fact an Iranian general, but that will take time, and in the meantime your account has been frozen.

[0] https://docs.fcdo.gov.uk/docs/UK-Sanctions-List.html


But that's not only online banks; my brick-and-mortar bank did the same thing, froze my account until I provided papers (they already had, just updated). I went to the closest physical branch and they told me 'blah dep flagged this, nothing we can do'.


I think the point as more that you can get escalate things with physical authorities (police, courts) if they have a nearby local physical branch.

Their internal policies ofcourse will remain the same.


Police aren’t going to help you with bank issues, and the courts don’t care if there’s a local branch or not, as the hypothetical lawsuits are filed against HQ . It’s just not true. It makes people like OP _feel_ better because they have someone to yell at, but it doesn’t help.


> online banks

You keep using that word and it's masking the real problem here.

The problem is that this company isn't a bank and isn't regulated as a bank. If they were a bank this wouldn't be happening. There would be recourse.

Use banks. Keep your money in regulated institutions. History has countless examples why.

I'm just gonna come out here and say 'don't use fintech companies'


Heads up that all financial institutions in the US, regardless of if they're regulated as a bank or not, are subject to following KYC/AML laws. Bank's are just as much, if not more subject to scrutiny in this area.

You can't use a bank to skirt KYC/AML laws, sorry. And you have a similar amount of recourse (little to none) if you run afoul of them.


If they need source of funds, it's AML/CTF, not fraud.


Good luck with that. I had my account frozen at the biggest bank in USA, with no notice or explanation. When I went into the bank they pretty much said "sorry". Almost two weeks later my account was unfrozen again without notice or explanation.


It definitely would have, because you can walk into a branch office and talk to a real person, not some AI chat bot that creates a ticket after boring you to death with unhelpful answers, and then you end up waiting for that to be looked at and async back and forth that can take days.


It may unfortunately not help, in such cases, the salesman sitting in the bank ("account representative") is not more useful than a flower in an office pot.

All they can do is to tell you to wait for weeks for feedback, and if you don't comply, call the security on you.


This real person doesn't really have any significant advantage.

From my personal experience, when you have a problem the only thing they can do is to call someone and talk on your behalf, and you can do the same from home, btw. The only advantage the banker has in this case is that they have those numbers on fast dial. But keep in mind that even if you called the right department nothing can be resolved immediately and all the following communications are by paper mail, so it takes months to recover your funds.


interestingly my brick-and-mortar bank (ING Netherlands) also stopped accepting walk in appointments during covid and conveniently kept that on now. So you have to deal with this shit anyway just to talk to someone, but yes at least there are still people


And banks are closing all of their physical presences one after the other. Pretty soon they'll just be a bank of computers and an AI for all of your interaction.

I hope to have shut down my business activities by then.


That, in theory, should create the space for a challenger bank providing real-people interaction. Metro Bank seems to be doing that (yes, they are currently in trouble, but so are a lot of other banks - interest rate changes caught a lot of folks off-guard).


Service as a Service :)


Enshittification seems sticky though. It takes a while before customers realize that the "tech banks'" support are like trying to talk to Google.

We will have to pay a premium over today's price for a normal bank.


In all likelyhood they have little more to go on than the same script the AI has, except maybe they also watched a training video published a long time ago that is now out of date.


We don’t hear about traditional banks freezing money as much online banks. Maybe people who use traditional banks are mostly running traditional businesses with well understood risk profiles.

Also traditional banks make you go through a lot of paperwork upfront, so they probably don’t have as much as risk online banks which approve everyone without much paperwork. So that’s why online banks aggressively block anyone who is high risk and start doing big enough volume.


but they have a very different approach wrt. _how_ they comply with them

also as important there is an additional hop in the money transfer involving two institutions, this might not help you if there is e.g. money frozen because of an police investigation, but for algorithms running rogue it can help to have money in two different organizations.


True, while revolut/cash app provide some services banks don't, I only keep minimal amount of money in them at any given time, and for as short time as possible.


And to add

- They do not offer live chat at the moment because they are too busy.

- The phone waiting times are up to 30 minutes. I've called them many times and they are completely unable to do anything as they are the 'support' team and it all depends on the 'verification' team.

- They respond to emails with canned responses, usually 2-3 days

- They respond on Twitter in public and by DM. In public, they make it sound like they really care and ask to DM. If you DM, you get an AI bot that might eventually put you through to an agent if you find the correct way through the decision tree. Then the agent will tell you that they are working as fast as they can and you should wait another 10 working days and see what happens.


Have you tried contacting them via complaints-team[at]wise.com and complaints[at]wise.com? This has worked for me pretty well in the past.

https://wise.com/help/articles/2235393/how-do-i-make-a-compl...


This is the way to go. "A complaint" in the financial world is a very specific thing, it's not just someone having a grumble about things. Financial Conduct Authority regulations mean that once a formal complaint has been raised the company is obliged to resolve that complaint within a specified time frame, and if they don't you can escalate it to the FCA, who on investigating can issue substantial penalties if the company is found to be at fault. All financial companies have internal teams whose entire job is resolving complaints before that happens.


This. You want to speak to the people in the bank whose KPI is "zero regulatory actions this quarter", not the people whose KPI is some bullshit like customer satisfaction eNPS scores.


[flagged]


No it doesn’t?


Some people may use HN in read-only mode, and if they come across something where they think they can assist, they have to create an account. Sounds crazy I know.


there's a chance they're actually having technical difficulties my tracking number was invalid for more than a day just a few days ago


Someone suggested I get a Wise account a short while ago because it's cheaper than bank transfers. But I've never seen any kind of 'account freezing' from my bank that wasn't to protect me (for instance: by doing wire transfers from three different continents inside of 24 hours). But I've had trouble with just about any other PSP/money transmitter service in one form or another and I'm very wary of giving them access to my accounts and/or using them for significant transfers.

I don't actually care all that much about the transaction fees, but I really care about my payments reaching their destination and the fact that my reputation is tied into my ability to pay people agreed upon amounts in time for work performed. On their end they rely on me and these middlemen are welcome to their cut but in return they should do what they promise. Wise looks particularly bad here because they overran their self imposed deadline, which is too long any way. Payments in flight should be dealt with inside of 24 hours, you either forward the money to the destination or you refund to the originator so that they can pursue other ways to pay. Because otherwise you are going to cause massive problems, both for the originator and the recipient.

The only excuse would be a court order to seize the money. Other than that I can't see any reason why a money transmitter would seize payments unless it is inbound credit card payments where they are afraid of chargebacks. But that should be a contractually agreed upon hold-back, not something capricious.


Agreed. If you have KYC questions, reject the transfer and send it back (or better yet, don't let the customer initiate the transaction in the first place). Holding it for any longer than 24 hours is no different from ransoming it.

However, I'm not sure this logic applies to OP situation, since it sounds like their money is being held in Wise bank accounts (which store money in them). So there is not necessarily a particular transaction to reverse.


I don't want to sound negative, but Wise is working for most people and even for myself almost all the time.

The fact that you are being rejected by Revolut and Airwallex simply means that there is something fundamentally wrong on how you do your money transfers. I am not saying you are doing something criminal, but rather that your methods are raising alarms all over their systems.

Regarding your funds, Wise is supervised by FCA, Financial Conduct Authority in the UK, and a lot of the times, writing email to them might get things started.

Now, for those that are saying that Wise is not a bank and therefore the funds are not secured, hear me out:

Money transfer services need to have 100% of your money covered in cash, unless you opt-in on interest earnings and similar additional products, but even though those are also protected in some way (check Wise faq).

Wise being a large company, has multiple bank accounts spread around the world, meaning that they are probably more resilient to the negative events than even some larger banks in your country.

Of course, be careful with your money, never trust anyone 100%, always spread your risks, but generally speaking, Wise and similar services are the next best thing to hopping on the plane and opening bank account in different countries.

Source: working in Fintech atm


> I don't want to sound negative, but Wise is working for most people and even for myself almost all the time.

Just because it's working for you, doesn't mean it's not working for them. Their funds are still frozen.

> The fact that you are being rejected by Revolut and Airwallex simply means that there is something fundamentally wrong on how you do your money transfers. I am not saying you are doing something criminal, but rather that your methods are raising alarms all over their systems.

"I am not saying you are doing something criminal"

The fact that you're even ceding grounds in the first place is part of the problem. Again, they haven't done anything to warrant this behavior. Why isn't "innocent until proven guilty" being applied here?


They did the same to me once, they wanted an explanation what my surname means, my surname and date of a workshop where included in the transfer reference. They froze it and refused to release it for a few weeks. How do I explain what my surname means, it's literally my surname, they have it in sender details too? Every time I tried to explain it, my email history got picked up by somebody else, who didn't read the past emails and asked me the same stupid question again and again. Their CS never picked up the phone, I literally spent whole working day waiting during "busy hours". They responded to my email with 2-4 days delayed. I eventually told them to fuck off and refund the money. To prove a point I made exactly the same transfer using Revolut and recipient had the money next working day at 8am.


I remember your story from this! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35341666


Yup, that's still my the worst banking experience.


Prove a point to who?


I know this won't help you much, but as a point of reference. Last year they've blocked my account as well and wanted some documentation/proofs for their verification team. Which I provided the same day, but then it took nearly 4 weeks to clear. Like you, I've asked them for feedback, but the response was the usual "The verification team is busy".


Yeah, that's usually the thing; 'we are working as fast as we can for you, but this department is really busy' for something that takes 5 minutes. And that for weeks.


I loved Wise when I first moved to Berlin from Seattle. After a few months though I just got used to Deutsche Bank and although their site is about a decade (or more!) behind Chase, I've discovered that being with a real bank is better in most ways. I just wish there was a modern, full service bank in Berlin - I would switch to that if it existed.


DKB is pretty decent, and you can withdraw money without fees on all ATMs as long as you withdraw >= 100€ in one go. Berlin is absolutely ridiculous with ATM fees.

Finanztip.de should be your go-to resource in Germany for questions like that. It's a non-profit, funded by a Fintech guy who decided to start it after his large exit. All articles are written by journalists. It's a real gem.


Not sure about the whole world, but in Germany and the EU, the limit is 50EUR for withdrawing money from DKB.

There are, of course, also disadvantages, like the fact that the new online banking apps are utter shit and offer maybe half of the functionality the old apps offered, but still they sunsetted them.

Advantages are that the have a really good exchange rate when paying with the card in foreign currency. Like really good and they don't charge the 2% tax per transaction that other banks charge.


DeutscheBank has free ATM withdrawals as long as it's from Cash Group (Commerzbank, etc...) which are pretty much everywhere.


> I've discovered that being with a real bank is better in most ways

Same in India. I tried using a neobank but quickly closed the account. They don't have the services traditional banks do and everything was slower than it is in my current bank. My current bank will pick up any paper and signature they need from home or deliver any documents to home the same day.

I get better Forex rate than wise or any startup. The target audience for these neobank are college students or new working people.

For reference, I use ICICI which is the third largest bank in India.


Commerzbank is suprisingly good. Modern app, English app, responsive phone support. Big balance sheet.


Also, no monthly fees if you get credit of >700€ per month


Berliner Sparkasse?


First, Wise is not your bank. It's a dodgy money-transmitter business.

Second, never keep a balance in Wise. Just use it for transfers. It's good for US/EU since transfers are close to instant. If they are instant in South Africa, you should be able to make a transfer using SEPA, then to a South African bank. Rinse and repeat so you don't get $40k stuck.

One thing I noticed about these fintech companies is that they won't ban you if you don't keep a balance. I had lots of troubles with freezing funds with other fintechs (ie: PayPal, Skrill, etc..) but that stopped once I stopped having a balance with them. That is interesting, because my flow with them now is "$xxx received, $xxx sent". Which should, theoretically, trigger a money laundering alert.

I am biased to say, at this point, that they are maliciously freezing money but I do not have any proof of that at the moment.


"since transfers are close to instant" for US, no?

ACH pull/push takes days to get credit either way, wire is faster but still no where close to instant? I know SEPA "can" be instant, but AFAIK wise doesn't do (near)instant transfers to/from US.


I don't know but ACH times have been variable for me from almost instant (few minutes) to a few days. But for Wise, it's usually a 10 minutes window.


> Second, never keep a balance in Wise. Just use it for transfers. It's good for US/EU since transfers are close to instant.

These two statements seem to contradict each other. How can you have an instant transfer (out) if you don't keep a balance?


As in clear "employee 1" transfer and then move to "employee 2". So in case you get frozen, you only get 2-3k instead of 40k.


> we get paid by a few customers around the world every month and pay out contractors also around the world

Which would look exactly like money laundering, tax evasion, terrorism financing etc especially if those customers/contractors are based in questionable countries.

So not surprised you've triggered their AML/KYC checks.


Fair enough. However, being able to "get paid by a few customers around the world every month and pay out contractors also around the world" is what Wise claim they offer to their customers. From their website: "Our dream is for people to live and work anywhere seamlessly. That means money without borders: moving it instantly, transparently, conveniently, and — eventually — for free."


> especially if those customers/contractors are based in questionable countries.

South Africa has lots of problems, but as far as I know terrorism financing and being a hub for money laundering or tax evasion aren’t among them. I could be wrong, but I’ve never heard about South Africa in that context.


According to this [1], South Africa is on the list of FATF high-risk countries.

Surprised Wise even allowed them to make a single transaction before doing the check.

[1] https://www.fatf-gafi.org/en/publications/High-risk-and-othe...


> but Wise, my bank

I also use Wise for my "banking services", but remember that Wise is NOT a bank, it's not regulated or insured as one.

For alternatives - doing cross border service is too much adminstration and legal bother for most of the new online services - try an old fashioned bank that has an international presence. At worst you may have to visit an office (from the Netherlands you could make the trip in a day for less than €100), but the service will be an order of magnitude greater.


Yes, for the company we have a large brick & mortar international bank (with custom contracts on money transfer fees) and a backup brick & mortar bank where we put our money that is marked for investments. For payments to staff and expenses, we use Wise + Revolut (both) and we all have both cards. This seems to get us the best rates with the least risk. It's a little bit more expensive than just using Revolut or Wise, but having our funds frozen would be lot more expensive.


If you opt to receive interest on your balance (I don't see a reason not to), your money will be kept in JPMorgan Chase Bank, NA, and FDIC insured.


Hope your problem will be resolved soon. For our company AML-check was usually done within a week and caused by fact that our game publisher that money come from was based in Dubai.

But if for some reason it take more than 2 weeks to unfreeze your account and they are not responding make sure to make complain with FCA. As Wise HQ located in UK it's the best way to deal with them:

https://www.fca.org.uk/

Yeah I personally only know that compaining to FCA does indeed work for consumers, but I pretty certain it will for business account too. UK regulators also usually reply fast enough.


This morning, my accountant warned me that Wise has frozen the funds of many of their clients, mostly freelance software developers, and they've been blocked for weeks now. This freelancers are not related in any way (except having the same accountant).


in which country are you in?


Croatia (part of EU)


I moved hundreds of k with wise to buy a house and went through the same bullshit. Took around a week.

Then the bank which received the money from wise wanted the same and it took a month and they even charged me 500€ for the verification.

Don't blame wise, blame your shitty governments and the shitty regulations.

They're just covering their asses from the government.

I also "bank" with Revolut and Airwallex. Revolut and Airwallex never asked me anything even on ~100k.

Airwallex is a business account though.

I'm sure it's pretty random. Anecdotally, I've heard of people getting locked out of Revolut / Airwallex.

If you want better service you probably need to go to some bank in a blacklisted country without all these anti money laundering BS regulations

Banks in the Uk have always been pretty lax in my experience, way better experience compared to europe (and also much better deals / interest rates)


>Wise, my bank

Wise is not licensed as a bank, but rather a payment institution (or the local equivalent).

https://wise.com/help/articles/2932693/how-is-wise-regulated...

This affects your rights.

>We're headquartered in the Netherlands

I recommend Bunq, which _is_ a bank:

https://www.bunq.com/business

>I tried Revolut Business and Airwallex and got a generic "We can't offer you services at this time and you can't appeal and we can't tell you why" rejection from both of them

This is not a good sign. Who are your company's directors? Are any considered politically-exposed persons?


Funnily enough Wise is the only "non-bank" that currently pays me interest on my money voluntarily (that is going to be fun doing taxes for). All other banks are currently forcing me to open new accounts and shuffle the money (triggering god knows what checks each time I do this).

> Netherlands

Yeah, the neo-liberal tax-haven narco-state :)


And ironically, the OG electronic payment institution, PayPal, actually is a bank in the EU.


> Wise, my bank

https://wise.com/us/blog/wise-as-bank-account

"Wise is not a bank"

Keep money in banks.


Thanks, this was my first thought too. Wise has an interest rate competitive with many HYSA but I can't imagine leaving any sizeable amount in there without feeling like my money I've put my money in a bag on my front lawn with the promise that someone will come by later with a 4.3% larger bag of money.


I used Wise for five years as a freelance developer. Last year, they suddenly blocked my account. At that time, my only client was a company listed in the S&P 500, who sent my salary through Wise. When Wise asked for proof of my contract, I sent them the documents. However, they still blocked my account without telling me why. They gave me my money back after seven days, but my account remained blocked without explanations.


Sadly most regular banks will hose you on exchange rates and fees. I work for a company in the US but live in Europe. I've experimented with many ways of moving money and still the best by far is wise. I've tried a dollar account at my bank here but the fees and exchange rates were trash, not to mention that it's abysmally slow to move money that way. Wise has been great for me so far, but I'm only using it as a conduit from my us bank to my euro one.


Revolut Business + subscription should be more cost effective than Wise.


Brick-and-mortar is not a guarantee either. I've got my account frozen by a Hungarian bank in 2015 due to "suspicious activity". I consulted my lawyer, apparently that had no legal grounds, with this information I came to the nearest branch, they unfroze the assets immediately, and I withdrew everything.

In 2022 the bank was proclaimed an international sponsor of war.


Your case shows exactly this: you can march into a brick and mortar bank with your lawyer in tow and chances are everything will be unfrozen in minutes. So it is a kind of guarantee.


My business Wise card numbers mysteriously vanished a couple weeks ago without notification. Their exchange services are convenient, but I wouldn't keep any significant cash with them.


> Posting as a warning to others, but also if you know of any alternatives to Wise that serve EU businesses I am all ears.

I mean, it depends what you're trying to do, but if you are a company which wants somewhere to put its money, using a _bank_ is traditional. There are lots of banks in the Netherlands.


The strange 'allure' of fintech.

'Now working on our 4th denied application for a banking licence, please continue to give us money.'

The red flags are so thick around some of these companies that you can't even see their door.


Quickbooks froze one of mine for 90. Called a dozen times, my accountant called the same number of times, you can’t even talk to their fraud department. They won’t tell you what info they need to verify or what is wrong. I will never use any Intuit product ever again.


Are you a PEP (Politically Exposed Person) or are you married or somehow officially connected to one?


It's possible to be marked as PEP, and be unaware of it. Teams which do research to compile PEP lists are expectedly incompetent when dealing with non-English-speaking world. I know a guy who actively participated in an electoral campaign in his home country as a volunteer, in connection with an incident (nothing related to money) his name got splashed in national news for a short period. Aaand five years later in another country where he came to work, banks deny him opening account because somebody added him to PEP lists as a "political party leader" (he never been even a member). There's no way to appeal, and it never expires. Banking compliance is just broken in so many ways, that there are numerous people who suffer for no reason having denied banking services, accounts frozen etc.


PEP is wholly incompetent in any language, I'm still flagged as a PEP because I'm the father of a 60 year old US senator, despite not having any ties to the US nor possessing a time machine.


for those like me that we're unfamiliar with this term there are FAFT guidelines for AML for PEPs[1]

[1] https://www.fatf-gafi.org/en/publications/Fatfrecommendation....


I had weird buggy issues with Wise when setting up an account, which really turned me off. I ended up using Payoneer instead, which so far has worked reasonably well. They seem to ask for more data on a regular basis but respond quickly once it’s submitted.


What a shame... I guess I should reconsider using Wise as my main bank-like service.

Wise has one of the best (online) interfaces for a bank-like service. Clean, fast, and simple.

A few days ago they suddenly told me my account numbers were changing[1]. The old ones would stop working less than 3 weeks later. And the new bank account numbers don't work at all the places I am use the old numbers (Bank of America credit card payments and Vanguard).

Now this.

[1]: https://wise.com/help/articles/2G69Jf6EEvf5TvYSlA8XjQ/were-c...


I've run a consulting business for the last 5 years and use online banks to pay team members, but not receive client payments.

- Banned from PayPal, requires submitting mail from an address I no longer live at (not even the same continent anymore)

- Restricted on Payoneer because my company name (essentially my name) is different than the info I registered with (a cool brand). Fortunately I can still pay inbound requests, but I cannot send outbound payments without an originating request.

- Now currently using Wise and loving it. Hoping I don't get banned.

I guess there is always Revolut?

Or the next "We're not Wise! We're better" startup?


haha yeah exactly I feel like they all follow the same pattern of really focusing on The Customer in the beginning and getting super popular through word-of-mouth praise.

Then they turn on the money taps and just scale up and "move upmarket" to a point where they can't provide good customer service any more to smaller businesses until the next small startup comes along and focuses on smaller markets.


They used to be good back when they started, but alas not only have the grown significantly and can't deal with the support load, but as they're growing towards being a "real" bank (ie; they actually have licenses to operate) they're subject to much stricter regulation, so this will only get worse.


I consider all internet neobanks totally unreliable and never trust them with large sums. However, Wise could be quite useful in some cases. For example, last year I needed to rescue my money from Turkish bank. My contractee send it there by mistake, their accounting didn't receive my request to use another bank.

Turkish bank was not providing an ability to just SWIFT money to another country. But I was able to convert to Turkish lira, then transfer it to Wise lira account,convert again and send SWIFT to my bank. Despite double conversion and three transfer fees I lost less than 2.5% of total amount. The alternative was to fly to Turkey and bring back the cash (including airport red corridor fuss).

Needless to say, I did this transfer in several batches with several days in-between. I would never trust internet neobank with more than $5000 equivalent.


It's important to remember that Wise is not a bank, they say so themselves: https://wise.com/us/blog/wise-as-bank-account

It doesn't come with the same regulation and guarantees as a bank. It's a financial service and using them as a bank is quite risky in my opinion.


"First they came for the cryptocurrency traders..."


> We're headquartered in the Netherlands, not Cayman Islands or Mauritius

I love how the author makes it sound as if a company in the Netherlands simply cant do “dodgy” stuff by default - regardless of wether that country is a main drug transit hub - unlike those other countries.

To be fair to me the operation does sound like a potential money laundering scheme, particularity in the flourishing dutch drug and weapon smuggling trade. I am certain op is not doing it but Wise has to check his account regardless of his perceived privilege.

Hope it gets cleared out soon though as these types of checks are real pita when you need cashflow. If and when they make them they should be extremely prompt or else i’d move to a different bank.


The structure of his company matches the typical customer that Wise advertises itself as serving. So while it may be suspicious at first glance, so will most Wise customers. And if OP has been sending transactions consistently for months, then why is Wise suddenly suspicious now? They should have eliminated those suspicions at the time of account opening.

But okay, sure - they have an obligation to follow regulations and investigate any suspicious transactions or sources of funds. But they should be responsive during the investigation, not unreachable for more than two weeks. If they're going to go radio silent, or take a long time to investigate, then at least release the funds to OP under the restriction that they can only be sent back to the account from which they originated. Otherwise they're just holding the funds for ransom while making no effort to investigate whether they have any right to freeze them in the first place.

If the investigation determines that OP is a legitimate customer and funds should not be restricted, then IMO Wise should pay a fine for every day they held the funds. What if exchange rates tanked in a black swan event, or OP has an emergency, and can't move their money?


This is very unfortunate but it is the cost of being in a regulated system, hopefully Wise can resolve this ASAP.

> Some of the other stories have been from people who turned out to be doing things - e.g. cryptocurrency trading - where I can kind of see why their finance providers would maybe get suspicious of illegal activity.

As long as you're not involved in any crypto activity is not involved then this shouldn't be an issue, perhaps it is some intern at Wise who accidentally done this mess which would be bad.

I would say contacting Wise about this would be the next steps to resolving this, I am sure they will swiftly get this resolved.


> I tried Revolut Business and Airwallex and got a generic "We can't offer you services at this time and you can't appeal and we can't tell you why" rejection from both of them

I just opened a Revolut Business account for a fairly complicated (to them) structure, a Dutch CV with several partners and managed by a company. Took some back and forth with documents and chat sessions, but is done now.

So I wonder what triggered a downright 'no' in your case. Might also explain what the problem is with Wise.


Bitcoin fixes this kind of problem. As you mentioned, those are bank accounts that you don't own. Those are NOT yours.


> Bitcoin fixes this kind of problem.

Not really, as long as everyone else you interact with uses fiat currency you need some way to convert between that and bitcoin which means you will be connected to the fiat financial system.

This problem might indeed be solved if the whole world moved to bitcoin, but that would introduce a whole host of other problems, most of which would be solved by reinventing banks and other parts of the financial system on top of bitcoin (note that these systems did exist already for centuries on top of gold and silver before the era of fiat money). Then you’re back to square one.


Exchanges have this problem, however. If you're completely divorced from western money systems and can barter in unsecured, unregulated commodities then sure, you avoid this problem whilst accepting a myriad of other risks.


Bitcoin fixes this kind of problem.

Until withdrawals are suspended or the exchange you're dealing with raises fees or simply goes bankrupt or crypto price crashes or customers can't/won't do crypto or ...

On second thought, Bitcoin in it's current form doesn't really "fix" transaction issues that a "real world" business needs to address --- which explains why very few people are actually using it as a real currency.


Money in banks is insured and access to it is somewhat regulated. The problem this person has is that the company they're using as a 'bank' isn't actually a bank.

Keep your money in banks. Regulated, established, FDIC (or similar) insured banks. Or in bonds. Or in mutual funds or whatever. Don't keep it with 'fintech' companies that specifically mention on their website that they aren't banks.


Protip:

If you have a low volume of high amount transactions, skip the fancy Fintech (Mafia) companies and just use a good old bank account.

The international wire transfer fee is on par or sometimes even lower than Stripe transaction fee and once the money is transferred, it's yours.


the transfer fee isn't the main appeal of Wise, the currency exchange rate is. I've never seen a bank that offered anywhere near close as theirs.


Unfortunately in some countries it's a choice between the old mafia and the new mafia. You're getting screwed in some way regardless of what you choose.


What are the issues with a normal bank account? (apart from potentially hire fees)


Typically exactly that. New finance has no fees and might steal your money once and suddenly, while regular banks steal it continuously hoping you won't notice.

The average 10 €/month in "account management fees" aka being able to have the privilege to lend them money adds up over the years. Online banking costs extra, because of course it does, SMS alerts cost extra because of course they do. Want a Mastercard/Visa system compatible card to actually do anything with your money? That'll be 50 €/year. Earning interest on your money? Haha, here's your 2 cents a month, don't spend them all in one place. I'm pretty sure I get more interest on the little I keep on Wise than all of my regular bank accounts combined.

Nickle and diming people to death just because they can and they know you have nowhere else to go.


Completely unrelated and will get flagged/downvoted - but x.com is such a weird domain, I don't know how people are still around on Twitter still ...


We are (very happy) Ritza clients. Bummer to hear this is happening to them.




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