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Wise refuses to let us access our $60k AUD

hey.paris

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Re: Wise refuses to let us access our $60k AUD

#111

Post by lmm »

reconnecting wrote: post #103
lmm wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Levels of trust differ. Neo-banks, by default, have zero trust for their customer accounts, whereas traditional banks have at least some established trust. As a result, companies like Wise use fraud prevention systems that may flag your account simply because you logged in from an risky network.

Traditional banks can and do do exactly the same.

Re: Wise refuses to let us access our $60k AUD

#112

Post by parisidau »

gloosx wrote: post #109

Any adequate person would read their Service Agreement and stay back, because by accepting it, you accept that: 1. They reserve the right to reject, refund, or limit transactions "at our sole and absolute discretion." 2. They can impose and change limits without telling you. 3. When you "add" money to your Wise account, you’re technically sending money to Wise, and they then decide when to credit your Wise balance. 4…

I can answer in our case: as an Australian business that receives a lot of USD, precious few options for keeping that money in USD _and_ having it accessible via a debit card exist. This is one of them. Typically, we don't let much money sit in the Wise account, because as you rightly say, their terms are onerous as hell.

Re: Wise refuses to let us access our $60k AUD

#113

Post by gloosx »

parisidau wrote: post #112
gloosx wrote: post #109

Any adequate person would read their Service Agreement and stay back, because by accepting it, you accept that: 1. They reserve the right to reject, refund, or limit transactions "at our sole and absolute discretion." 2. They can impose and change limits without telling you. 3. When you "add" money to your Wise account, you’re technically sending money to Wise, and they then decide when to credit your Wise balance. 4…

I can answer in our case: as an Australian business that receives a lot of USD, precious few options for keeping that money in USD _and_ having it accessible via a debit card exist. This is one of them. Typically, we don't let much money sit in the Wise account, because as you rightly say, their terms are onerous as hell.

Interesting, thanks for the explanation.. Here where I am located I can accept payments in any currency on my business account in bank institution and spend them right away, but maybe I'm just lucky with location.

Re: Wise refuses to let us access our $60k AUD

#114

Post by reconnecting »

lmm wrote: post #111
reconnecting wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Levels of trust differ. Neo-banks, by default, have zero trust for their customer accounts, whereas traditional banks have at least some established trust. As a result, companies like Wise use fraud prevention systems that may flag your account simply because you logged in from an risky network.

Traditional banks can and do do exactly the same.

I'm speaking about Wise, as their logo is featured as a client of a fraud prevention platform. This makes it easy to imagine the kind of risk scoring they might use for their client accounts.

However, I'm not aware of large banks using such online fraud prevention services. For example, in France, there's one major vendor that powers most of the banks. If we look at their client area, there's no indication of fingerprinting.

Since device fingerprinting is included in most online fraud prevention systems, I can assume that traditional banks in France are not using these kinds of tools to screen accounts. But perhaps you have another source of information.

Re: Wise refuses to let us access our $60k AUD

#115

Post by parisidau »

gloosx wrote: post #113
parisidau wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can answer in our case: as an Australian business that receives a lot of USD, precious few options for keeping that money in USD _and_ having it accessible via a debit card exist. This is one of them. Typically, we don't let much money sit in the Wise account, because as you rightly say, their terms are onerous as hell.

Interesting, thanks for the explanation.. Here where I am located I can accept payments in any currency on my business account in bank institution and spend them right away, but maybe I'm just lucky with location.

Our main, regular, actual, regulated Australian bank does offer a "Foreign Currency Account" in USD (and many other useful currencies), but cannot link a debit card to it, and it can only wire transfer.

Our regular transaction account with our real bank can receive USD just fine, but it will convert into AUD upon receipt, and spent as AUD with the attached debit card.

It's more effective to be able to spend USD directly, as needed.

Wise's offering (and others like it: OFX, Airwallex, Revolut) offer ACH, FedWire, Wire transfer, and a Debit card.

Re: Wise refuses to let us access our $60k AUD

#118

Post by omnimus »

vb-8448 wrote: post #107
fto_wise wrote: post #65

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.

So you need someone on HN to get hit by your post to get a decent customer support?!?

Seems like they are saying this has been resolved before it was posted here so before someone had a chance to see it on HN?

Re: Wise refuses to let us access our $60k AUD

#119

Post by wsc981 »

I've also had a bad experience with Wise.

They temporarily blocked a transfer to my personal account, a small amount of money from my sister for my daughter's birthday.

They were asking who this person was that this money was being sent to. And what the reason was for this money being sent to my account.

Eventually they released the money, but it makes Wise feel unsafe. Why make me jump through hoops for an insignificant amount of money?

Re: Wise refuses to let us access our $60k AUD

#120

Post by solarkraft »

Modern (fin) tech companies have 0 respect for their users. What‘s 0.1% of accounts being locked out, with a good chance they are scam/money laundering accounts anyway? Eh, whatever.

If they complain, put them against an AI that doesn’t help. Whatever, we still have millions or billions of customers.

... forgetting that it breaks the trust, companies and whole lives of real people that decided to depend on them. Especially a bank CAN NOT spontaneously stop working and especially not with no recourse.

But is there even a way to make companies care about their users? Somehow the economics/management focus would have to shift (maybe legal recourse for spontaneous/unreasonable denial of service?).

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