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Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business
201–210 of 282 posts
Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business
#202Let me explain this to those who are not familiar with the American system of kleptocracy: Banks freeze account to steal the money, not because they suspect wrongdoing. The protagonist in the article finally showed Chase it would be more expensive to keep the money than to give it back, so they gave it back.
Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business
#203This is why Bitcoin is ideal. You can hold and transfer any amount, any time of day, without fear of surprises like this. Would I use it as a primary cash account for my business today? No, because of the obvious exchange rate/price swings. But long-term, moving toward Bitcoin as a settlement layer (i.e., a modern SWIFT) would solve a ton of problems and avoid situations like this. The more people that do that/normal…
This doesn't make any sense. The problems a business faces are: - Receive money from customers. If the customers don't have Bitcoin, they're not going to pay you in Bitcoin. - Pay your employees and suppliers. Very few of them will accept Bitcoin. - Borrow money to cover differences between revenue and expenses. The entity loaning you the money may or may loan you Bitcoin, but what difference does it make? They're go…
> If the customers don't have Bitcoin, they're not going to pay you in Bitcoin.
Every customer my firm has offered a 15% discount if paying with BTC via Coinbase has taken it.
Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business
#204This is why Bitcoin is ideal. You can hold and transfer any amount, any time of day, without fear of surprises like this. Would I use it as a primary cash account for my business today? No, because of the obvious exchange rate/price swings. But long-term, moving toward Bitcoin as a settlement layer (i.e., a modern SWIFT) would solve a ton of problems and avoid situations like this. The more people that do that/normal…
This doesn't make any sense. The problems a business faces are: - Receive money from customers. If the customers don't have Bitcoin, they're not going to pay you in Bitcoin. - Pay your employees and suppliers. Very few of them will accept Bitcoin. - Borrow money to cover differences between revenue and expenses. The entity loaning you the money may or may loan you Bitcoin, but what difference does it make? They're go…
> because it decided to keep all of its funds in cryptocurrency and it either tanked overnight, they lost the key, SBF took their money because he felt like it
Tell us you don't comprehend cryptocurrency without telling us you don't...
Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business
#205> Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank Funny enough, I recently opened a Chase business checking because of this "bank not bank" news: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40480159 I still have a different business checking with a Mercury-like fintech provider. Chase freezes accounts, Fintech startups go under. Chase already froze my business credit card once. I had to send them a deed of a house th…
There is a middle ground called "community banking".
Many community banks are little more than fronts for pcbb.com or fisglobal.com at this point.
Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business
#206Similar experience: Citibank Retirement. I had about $80,000 in IRA/CD's. I'd created & contributed to them over a period of 35 years. Last year, it's time to retire, and Citibank won't give me half the money. It seems that some CD's are for "Cliff Stoll" and some for "Clifford Stoll". Citibank Retirement demanded a "Marriage Certificate, Divorce Decree, or Court Order" to demonstrate that "Cliff Stoll" is the same p…
How was it possible for both "Cliff Stoll" and "Clifford Stoll" to exist? Shouldn't your legal name be used as it is (i.e. no nicknames) on all papers? Or did you change your legal name?
Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business
#207I feel like these sort of corner cases likely can happen with any bank. The real question is: why did it take months of having their vital money withheld before trying to go around the bottom rung support that was clearly not going to help? By like week 2 I’d be talking to an attorney and I bet a letter from them would get it cleared up fast. (Perhaps I’m wrong though.)
I was in Canada, and I was also quite stressed with some keynote presentations I had to give, planning my move back to the US, and applying for my O-1 visa. I figured I'd sort it all out by the time I moved. However, I may have been a little too relaxed about the situation and stressed out about other stuff
Well in any case, I’m sorry that happened to you. It sounds awful.
Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business
#208About 10 years ago a startup I co-founded had about $3M in a Chase account. We received a notification that they were closing our account within 30 days. We weren't able to get any information but I assume this was a KYC false positive. The only thing I can think of is that we had some investors from the Middle East. We had no problem withdrawing our funds but since then, I've opened another business account and a pe…
Had a similar experience at a startup I co-founded. Chase's risk or compliance team suddenly decided to close our accounts. Possibly because we were in the crypto space.
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Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business
#209Crypto solves this. Well, eventually, after initially making it worse, because all your crypto-adjacent transactions in the meantime make legacy banks extra-hair-trigger suspicious.
> Crypto solves this. Not really. It just replaces this problem with a different but equally difficult problem: managing your crypto keys, which is a skill in and of itself. And if you hire someone to do it for you now you are right back where you started, trusting a third party. The right answer IMHO is to do business with a bank that is small enough that you have a contact there whom you personally know and will pi…
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Re: Cautionary tale on using Chase bank for indie business
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just for posterity, we received this on 6/28/2013. Looks like they actually gave us 60 days. > Dear [redacted] Inc. > A review of our records indicates that we are unable to retain your above-referenced account(s) (the "Accounts") at JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. (the "Bank"). > The terms and conditions governing the Accounts ("Account Rules") provide that the Bank may close your Accounts at any time. Although the Accoun…
> the Bank may close your Accounts at any time...the Account Rules do not require the Bank to provide you with advance notice of the termination of the Accounts I assume most of the big banks probably have similar language, which would be a huge red flag to me for a small business account. But what about banks like Mercury Bank, mentioned in the article as being more supportive of small businesses? Do their terms of…
If a bank suspects you of money laundering, they cannot discuss it with you. A bank employee could go to federal prison just for leaking the existence of a suspicious activity report (SAR).