Stripe had about EUR150k for more than 2 years, until they decided to pay, without interest, which they probably earned on top of my funds.
Treat these companies as public toilets: Leave the funds as less as possible.
Wise refuses to let us access our $60k AUD
91–100 of 156 posts
Re: Wise refuses to let us access our $60k AUD
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's easier to get justice from a local bank in your country, or to at least talk to a real person face to face than from PayPal Luxemburg or wherever they're located.
I doubt. It seems that payment providers have god-like rights from the government and don’t feel stressed by a few lawsuits here and there. I had a business account at a larger/largest Dutch bank, and have got the middle finger treatment all the way. From impossible to resolve typo in my company name (made by the bank), entirely wrong UBOs name on the payment card to the eventual account freeze for 4years while KYC w…
Yeah, the anti money laundering laws can give financial institutions god like powers and appeals can take a long time.
Re: Wise refuses to let us access our $60k AUD
#93In addition to the ridiculousness of the whole situation, it is unbelievably ridiculous that their customer service is the same incoherent, pro-forma slop that's now the norm for retail customer service everywhere. If you're offering financial services for business, you really need customer service that lives up to the name and, when a problem occurs, tells the customer the specific steps to take to fix it.
> If you're offering financial services for business, you really need customer service that lives up to the name and, when a problem occurs, tells the customer the specific steps to take to fix it.
Maybe they did the math (cost of offering this vs. possible gains) and it didn't check out. Maybe it's a gap for a newcomer. But maybe people just don't buy financial transactions based on the quality of service in a 0.1% case.
Re: Wise refuses to let us access our $60k AUD
#94Hey 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.
If you have a good escalation path, consider mentioning the other bad experiences people are reporting here, in particular contradictory claims made by customer service regarding the needed KYC information, lack of reading comprehension by customer service, or generally a kafkaesque, frustrating, broken KYC process.
See e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43981863 and the linked GIF showing the customer being sent into an infinite loop, the original report, and my own experience (being asked for nonexistent address components - I'm not looking for a one-off solution as exposing my money to Wise until the company has actually cleaned up its act would be... unWise).
Re: Wise refuses to let us access our $60k AUD
#95This is also a common experience in retail banking (not only wise) in the UK. I put the blame on excessive regulation. Businesses are scared of crossing the regulator for fear of revocation of licence or high fines. Also the regulations themselves impose lengthy delay requirements on doing business. What I've also found is the large incumbents largely skirt the regulations (HSBC for instance let's payments through wh…
Asking for KYC is normal. Here, OP is reporting that they're being alternatingly told that: - they need to provide KYC documents, except the documents they're being asked for are the same they already provided - everything is fine and no documents are required That's not "excessive regulation", that's incompetence and insufficient regulation.
I had one experience whereby I had to receive some payments from some foreign entity for both HSBC and revolut. I got stuck into weeks of wrangling with with revolut (similar to that of OP), and having been through that next time I used HSBC, who immediately allowed the payment.
Some businesses simply follow the regulation more closely then others. It's just a fact. Businesses are always making the trade off calculation as to fines Vs costs. For revolut a fine could be existential, for HSBC it is not. Therefore they behave differently. Fines are a cost of business and incumbent firms have helped design regulations with regulators in part to defend their market position. Of course, there is always what they say the regulations are for (e.g. money laundering prevention etc), but there is often a further motivation. This concept is not new and you can see it all around us in the multitude of state capture that exists in many places.
Re: Wise refuses to let us access our $60k AUD
#96This is also a common experience in retail banking (not only wise) in the UK. I put the blame on excessive regulation. Businesses are scared of crossing the regulator for fear of revocation of licence or high fines. Also the regulations themselves impose lengthy delay requirements on doing business. What I've also found is the large incumbents largely skirt the regulations (HSBC for instance let's payments through wh…
How does removing excessive regulation help this scenario? In what you describe the difference would be that HSBC doesn't get fined and neither HSBC or Revolut does any check. How does that help?
This scenario has happened because of the regulations that banks have to follow. They freeze accounts and check payments more frequently now given the extra scrutiny demanded of them.
Re: Wise refuses to let us access our $60k AUD
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't want to disclose the fraud prevention system that Wise uses, but I'm familiar with how it works, hence my assumption.
Do they use intentionally broken processes designed to frustrate people as an alternative to telling people they're blocked? It would explain a lot of things. It's also an absolute dick move and should be illegal (but likely isn't yet).
I'm not familiar with Wise's internal rules, but based on fraud prevention practices, it's highly likely that a financial institution would not disclose whether an account is soft-blocked/suspended. If they did, fraudsters could exploit that information to adjust their tactics.
Re: Wise refuses to let us access our $60k AUD
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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. 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 tel…
Yes, I must clarify that my opinion is based on EU/Swiss regulatory practices.
However, this doesn't change the fact that mostly neo-banks exploit regulatory gaps for growth, which ultimately leads to issues like the one described above.
Re: Wise refuses to let us access our $60k AUD
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. 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 tel…
Yes, I must clarify that my opinion is based on EU/Swiss regulatory practices. However, this doesn't change the fact that mostly neo-banks exploit regulatory gaps for growth, which ultimately leads to issues like the one described above.
It doesn't lead to those issues, you get those issues with any bank or pseudobank, neo- or otherwise. It might be harder to get an account to start with with some more traditional banks, but that doesn't make you any less likely to get randomly screwed by them.
Re: Wise refuses to let us access our $60k AUD
#100This is also a common experience in retail banking (not only wise) in the UK. I put the blame on excessive regulation. Businesses are scared of crossing the regulator for fear of revocation of licence or high fines. Also the regulations themselves impose lengthy delay requirements on doing business. What I've also found is the large incumbents largely skirt the regulations (HSBC for instance let's payments through wh…
How does removing excessive regulation help this scenario? In what you describe the difference would be that HSBC doesn't get fined and neither HSBC or Revolut does any check. How does that help?
> In what you describe the difference would be that HSBC doesn't get fined and neither HSBC or Revolut does any check. How does that help?
It would mean HSBC and Revolut would compete on a level playing field, and so would their customers, and ordinary businesspeople like OP wouldn't get randomly screwed.
(And sure, maybe a little more "money laundering" would also happen. But at this point the anti-money-laundering-financial-industrial complex has done far more harm to society than money laundering ever did)