71–80 of 156 posts
Is it possible that you used an unusual login pattern? Privacy IP proxy/TOR/VPN? It seems like a false positive from fraud prevention systems, combined with limited resources for manual review on Wise's side.
Unfortunately, this is the reality of modern business banking, and Wise is not unique in this. You can find similar reports about most major EMIs and a fair number of banks. Banks have basically become an inefficient and unfair branch of law enforcement, without presumption of innocence and without due process. Every imaginable abuse is justifiable by Compliance nowadays.
Do people feel that complying with the law is unreasonable, or do they feel like banks do other shady stuff in the name of compliance?
I’ve had all kinds of little annoying issues with Wise that cause me to be trapped in circles, but nothing this serious. Support is truly the thing that separates the wheat from the chaff. Everything is hunky-dory when it works, and the moment there’s a problem, you’re suddenly stuck in the Barbican at 3am with no signs, no lights and nobody to talk to.
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This is a familiar situation. I run a SaaS platform where I sell plugins for WordPress. Recently, my PayPal account was suspended, and a balance of €80,000 was frozen. The stated reason is a violation of the Terms of Service. However, no specific explanation has been provided — neither what rule I allegedly violated, nor how I violated it. I’ve searched through the lengthy documentation, but without clear guidance, t…
The thing is, noone can be told of this freeze/hold, that would be mean tipping off the party that made the suspicious transaction - from what I gather, it’s actually illegal to reveal it’s frozen, so they invent all kinds of meaningless/dumb reasons why the transaction (or the account) can’t be used right now.
So, lack of transparency and accountability IS the purpose of the system in that case.
Unfortunately, this is the reality of modern business banking, and Wise is not unique in this. You can find similar reports about most major EMIs and a fair number of banks. Banks have basically become an inefficient and unfair branch of law enforcement, without presumption of innocence and without due process. Every imaginable abuse is justifiable by Compliance nowadays.
I disagree. Neo-banks like Wise choose to grow irresponsibly. Any traditional local bank will usually speak with you first before opening an account. In contrast, neo-banks open accounts quickly and then rely heavily on automated fraud prevention systems, since manual reviews are costly. As a result, it's easy to get in, but you may later become a victim of limited resources for proper fraud handling and manual check…
Maybe that was still the case in 2015. In 2025, a traditional bank will ask for a ton of documentation, run it through the same (probably outsourced) automated fraud prevention system and tell you that unfortunately an account cannot be opened for you. At least that is a common situation for businesses that are too small to be important to the bank, but carry some compliance risk (international consulting, app developers, digital services, etc.). And then you are back to neo-banks...
This has been a trend everywhere, recently, but the severity of the situation differs country by country, so YMMV.
To this day I still get emails about my remaining balance roughly every quarter. During this time (7 years!), I had multiple exchanges with support guys and one of them escalated. The back office guy explained that in order to access/transfer my balance, I need to do as much KYC as if I was opening a new fresh account. He also made me understand that there is a 2 Euro fee to move my 0.27 Euro balance.
So there we have it. Apparently, they can't close the account because it has a balance in it. And also they can't transfer the balance without going through KYC. As if all of that matter, it makes no financial sense for me to claim the remaining balance. Regulatory dystopia at full display.
Hey there, I work at Wise and saw this during my break. I'm really really sorry for the bad experience here. I just checked with my team internally and this has been fixed prior to this making front page. If you are still facing an issue, can you reply to my comment - and I'll give you a call back on the number you provided our support team with. Thanks and my apologies again.
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I once had a fintech account with a company that is EU regulated. It was a long time ago and I used it for a couple transactions that resulted in a 0.27 Eur dust balance. I didn't use it after that and a couple years before Covid they decided they need more KYC to keep the account active and I just ignored them. To this day I still get emails about my remaining balance roughly every quarter. During this time (7 years…
Too much time is wasted discussing with various bots and call centre-based "customer support" these days. Normal procedure is/was to send a letter instructing them to close the account and to let them deal with it.