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Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

nytimes.com

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Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#291

Post by nanidin »

Klonoar wrote: post #166
nanidin wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent a year traveling in SE Asia circa 2012 and I didn’t have any problems with my bank account. n=1 and all that, and I didn’t have income coming from outside of the US, but I had countless ATM withdrawals and credit card spends. The only time a compliance officer has been in touch with me was when I was moving money to crypto exchanges.

The big factor is whether you change your address or not. Keep your US address on there and VPN (though frankly I’ve never needed to for anything other than Charles Schwab) and you often glide through unnoticed.

Ahh, good point I was running my own VPN with all traffic coming through Dallas for financial stuff.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#292

Post by landemva »

gruez wrote: post #215
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they are vague they catch every tom, dick and garry but so strict that every cartel still has acees to the banking system

The point isn't necessarily to cut money laundering down to zero, it's to add significant cost and effort so it makes the cartels job harder. Every international border isn't airtight either and causes a bunch of hassle for travelers, but we don't throw up our hands and give up the idea of border control.

> we don't throw up our hands and give up the idea of border control.

We must reside in different countries. Being in USA, I observe we did drop enforcement on the southern border.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/06/23/kama...

"... administration has ended the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocol, a policy that forced asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico as they await their court hearings, and has halted construction on a wall ..."

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#293

Post by Tao3300 »

xkekjrktllss wrote: post #113
XorNot wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a very obvious utility in the US which should be able to prevent this: The US Postal Service. It's federally required to exist, and services all Americans already. Basic banking services should be one of the things it is expanded to provide in a minimal, safe fashion (i.e. no loans or lending, but guaranteed electronic banking and funds transfer services).

The US Postal Service did serve as a bank from 1910-1966. It should simply restart.

We'll probably see people get demailed then too. They'll probably go for inmates first.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#294

Post by vvpan »

hanniabu wrote: post #249
krupan wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a tip, stick with Bitcoin, not crypto.

Ethereum trumps bitcoin in pretty much every metric except for market cap, which is lagging because bitcoin has the name brand, simpler for people to understand, and misinformation spread by bitcoin maxis and competing chains

Yeah, to say that "Bitcoin" is the epitome of blockchain technology, an ever-innovating field, is either ignorant or disingenuous.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#295

Post by shiroiuma »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #78

Protip to anybody who wants to spend an extended amount of time overseas - you’re looking at a strong opportunity to join the list of people who have their accounts closed. Red flags include quantity of overseas debit card transactions, setting a PO Box (this one apparently is a very big red flag to banks) or a PMB as your bank address, lots of wire transfers. Open multiple bank accounts at different banks, use servi…

>use services like wise.com for transfers

Last I heard, wise.com is outright stealing people's money now.

Otherwise, this is a good heads-up. Banking for expats can be tricky; a lot of US financial institutions don't want to service customers who live overseas, and will automatically cancel your account if they find out you don't live in the US.

The US is looking more and more like the old Soviet Union, where people weren't allowed to leave. Even China doesn't have this problem; there are tons of Chinese expats living in democratic nations, and they don't have problems like this.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#296

Post by Karunamon »

lxm wrote: post #144
XorNot wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a very obvious utility in the US which should be able to prevent this: The US Postal Service. It's federally required to exist, and services all Americans already. Basic banking services should be one of the things it is expanded to provide in a minimal, safe fashion (i.e. no loans or lending, but guaranteed electronic banking and funds transfer services).

> guaranteed electronic banking and funds transfer services That alone exceeds the requirement of “minimal” as there’s now a need to hire staff for fraud monitoring, handle disputed transactions, chase fraudulent transfers, deal with those who forgot their passwords to electronic banking, had their passwords stolen, etc. What are the new revenue channels that will pay for all that extra staff (and considering it’s US…

Worth mentioning that they are already involved in the financial anti-fraud business by way of postal money orders, and are already involved in electronic support by way of the very many services they already offer online. Very little of this proposal is entirely new to them.

There is no requirement that the service be revenue-neutral.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#298

Post by amatecha »

vorpalhex wrote: post #222
yterdy wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cory Doctorow has talked about how "they" test these kinds of things on captive "audiences" - mainly children and prisoners - before expanding to the rest of us. I tend to add marginalized groups to that list. Even when a person can nominally be held accountable, it doesn't matter if you can't reach them, protected by an administrative or institutional barrier of some kind. Standardized testing and remote learning mo…

I want to dive into the "how to politely resist this in an effective way". 1. Opt out of these things as much as you can. Often times you can't opt out of the underlying actual thing (school, banking, etc) but you can opt out of the terrible new thing. You don't need to explain to people a deep "why". Instead give the people polite, reasonable (and generally true) excuses. "Oh, it doesn't work on my computer". "Oh, I…

Right, it's a lot easier to say "my phone is too old" rather than "I reject basically the entire premise of the extractive, exploitative societal structures upon which this coercive relationship is built and relies", etc. :)

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#299

Post by rodgerd »

XorNot wrote: post #99
Ajay-p wrote: post #58

Debanking is deeply unfair but more so in our society that is moving increasingly towards a cash-less society. A person can be debanked for no fault of their own and that causes them to be unable to pay rent, bills, etc. Like being arrested - there is little recourse without great expense or effort.

There's a very obvious utility in the US which should be able to prevent this: The US Postal Service. It's federally required to exist, and services all Americans already. Basic banking services should be one of the things it is expanded to provide in a minimal, safe fashion (i.e. no loans or lending, but guaranteed electronic banking and funds transfer services).

In New Zealand the bank that provides government departments with banking is required to provide "banking of last resort" facilities to people, even going so far as people who have (for example) done bank fraud. The facilities are minimal - no overdrafts or credit cards, obviously! - but provide enough to function in a society where cheques don't exist and cash is rarely used.

Re: Why banks are suddenly closing down customer accounts

#300

Post by nanidin »

peyton wrote: post #164
nanidin wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent a year traveling in SE Asia circa 2012 and I didn’t have any problems with my bank account. n=1 and all that, and I didn’t have income coming from outside of the US, but I had countless ATM withdrawals and credit card spends. The only time a compliance officer has been in touch with me was when I was moving money to crypto exchanges.

I did something similar and my banker told me to knock it off.

The compliance officer was following up with me I think because it looked like I was doing structured transactions, back when crypto exchange max ACH was $500/day. I did some explanation of crypto and he was like “so it’s for investment?” and that was it.
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