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A change of address led to our Wise accounts being shut down

shaun.nz

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Re: A change of address led to our Wise accounts being shut down

#41

Post by gruez »

Etheryte wrote: post #27

I'm not really sure what the author expected. If you're in KYC and ask to speak to a manager when your document gets rejected, you're going to have a bad time. The person processing your documents can't give you leeway even if they wanted to, they have legal requirements and a process they must follow.

That makes sense if you're trying to use a costco membership card to board an international flight, but nitpicking over telecommunications "bill" vs "invoice" seems exactly the type of ambiguity that's worth escalating over?

Re: A change of address led to our Wise accounts being shut down

#42

Post by jemmyw »

Etheryte wrote: post #27

I'm not really sure what the author expected. If you're in KYC and ask to speak to a manager when your document gets rejected, you're going to have a bad time. The person processing your documents can't give you leeway even if they wanted to, they have legal requirements and a process they must follow.

So what do you do when the process has a problem? The document that your country issues that is valid and meets the KYC legal requirement but has a title that the internal process rejects? You need to speak to someone who can say "this meets the legal requirement but our process is bunk"

Re: A change of address led to our Wise accounts being shut down

#44

Post by rtpg »

Etheryte wrote: post #29
lxgr wrote: post #26

> a dropdown list of acceptable documents: a lease agreement, rates notice, tax document, utilities bill, or telecommunications bill. It’s baffling to me that these types of (usually unsigned in both the electronic and the ink way, not that the latter would prove anything in a scan) PDFs are still somehow the gold standard for “proofs” of address.

In many countries worldwide that's the reasonable best option. A scan of a physically signed piece of paper is no better, anyone could've signed it. So long as there is no global standard for digitally signed documents, that's what we're stuck with, no?

While you can always outright commit fraud, there are many jurisdictions where there are decently strong forms of proof that go beyond a letter.

Things like tax numbers with addresses associated to them, official address registers... hell, a lot of ID cards in many jurisdictions just have your address printed on it!

Now, again, fraud is possible, but "I registered my drivers license to a fake address" is a bit of a higher hurdle than "I edited my utility PDF to show the right address".

Though there's a bit of a blessing in things like PDFs being easily editable, in that many badly organized criminals will likely do it haphazardly, leading to messy metadata, or even more amateur hour stuff around just having the font be wrong or the like. More opportunities for a fraudster to trip up, so to speak.

Re: A change of address led to our Wise accounts being shut down

#46

Post by foota »

htrp wrote: post #25

It feels like particularly in finance, that startups who disrupt traditional players do so without a full understanding of all the corner cases and none of the regulatory accountability which is why those traditional finance players were so expensive in the first place.

Chesterson's bureaucracy

Re: A change of address led to our Wise accounts being shut down

#47

Post by justin66 »

djmips wrote: post #36

I don't know but I just quickly read the google doc cached version at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YS8FLnSz2eP-nXp7FJR7Gsef... And does this seem like AI automation gone mad?

No, this seems like the kind of madness a human bureaucracy is fully capable of without the use of advanced computing.

Re: A change of address led to our Wise accounts being shut down

#48

Post by phil21 »

Kwpolska wrote: post #30

Story as old as time. Fintechs may be cheaper or have a cooler app, but if you ever stray off the happy path, you can kiss your account and/or money goodbye.

What’s the difference between that and traditional banking?

Been party to more than a couple situations with large banks who decided that you violated some hidden AML related policy and with zero recourse. You are lucky to even get your money out of those accounts without lengthy litigation.

Might happen more with fintech, but traditional banking does not remotely make you immune to this. Start doing anything interesting not “normal” and you’ll find out the hard way.

Re: A change of address led to our Wise accounts being shut down

#49

Post by arjie »

Jesus Christ, what a nightmare. I've used Wise quite a bit and was blocked as well, though I'm not entirely sure what I did to get released. I was stuck in a place where I had to login to do something but it wouldn't let me log in. I told a friend of mine who managed to find me a page where I could finally get customer support without being logged in.

In my case, it was totally my fault because I foolishly used Wise on my work email. Why would I even do that? It did start this half-Kafkaesque nightmare but I managed to eventually get the account back. I'd compounded the problems by also trying to make a new account so I could get customer support and promptly ended up being banned for trying a duplicate account. Fantastic.

But at least you know there is some flow that can get you out of this temporarily restricted state - which seems far less severe than the flow they got stuck in. Being unable to actually get their money out seems crazy. I would have rented the damned WeWork and been done with it to be honest.

I have an archived copy here if you want to see https://archive.roshangeorge.dev/archive/1761866967.0412/ind... (hopefully the Cloudflare cache isn't misconfigured)

EDIT: The Wayback Machine has a copy as well, so you don't need mine https://web.archive.org/web/20251030232647/https://shaun.nz/...

Re: A change of address led to our Wise accounts being shut down

#50

Post by ntSean »

I feel as though the whole story isn't here, as there's one key detail that seems suspect from Wise's email: "Additionally, the reason behind our decision is because your activities exceed our risk tolerance."

It seems as though Wise had noticed payment patterns that seemed outside of what Wise is comfortable facilitating. I hope the author can get their funds, but this behaviour is consistent with all banking services.

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