Comment by thiago_fm
2 years ago
You can go to their brick-and-mortar building, say you want your money, call the police, give them a hard time even if they can't fix your issue, so they try to avoid it next time.
Pure online banking doesn't offer this option. For instance, I still even keep my printed quarter receipts just in case.
People trust technology too much, it's all well until it isn't, and you understand how much of your life you trusted to those companies.
Unfortunately, not always. I had once my account frozen by one of the UK's largest banks for days. The reason? Apparently they didn't have my mobile phone number. They never asked for it. Also, on multiple occasions their online banking was so broken that one wasn't even able to use it. The plus is that indeed, if something goes wrong, after a long time of inconvenient waiting, a human will eventually pick up the phone. The drawback is that sometimes they are so technologically broken that fixing things will take ages.
I recommend distributing even small sums of money across as many accounts as you have. Some in Revolut, some in Wise, some in a normal bank. There is a number of reasons for which access to your bank account can be blocked (fraud attempt, stolen SIM card, stolen card etc.) so the more backup you have, the better off you should be. As the person above said, keeping printed receipts might also be useful for legal purposes.
There are a particular set of AML/KYC laws for which none of that will ever help. They can’t tell you why, they can’t stop it next time. It sucks but there’s nothing any financial org can do about it.
I have a feeling they just blame those and do low effort bulk screening.
Those are the money laundering / antiterrorism bits, which are pretty hard to trigger.
The reality is that online banks rely on "AI" for their basic anti-fraud efforts much more than real banks do, and these are the results: arbitrary shutdowns and no customer service. But hey, I'm sure doing customer service wit ChatGPT will solve it (/s).
It really isn't that hard to trigger to them, the UK Sanctions List[0] is huge, and contains quite a lot of broad descriptions that doubtless result in people getting swept up in automated checks of the list. Is your name Ali Khalili? Cool, you're on the sanctions list, because that's literally all the identifying factors provided for an Iranian general. I'm sure once it flags the bank will reasonably quickly take a look at your details and realise you're not in fact an Iranian general, but that will take time, and in the meantime your account has been frozen.
[0] https://docs.fcdo.gov.uk/docs/UK-Sanctions-List.html
But that's not only online banks; my brick-and-mortar bank did the same thing, froze my account until I provided papers (they already had, just updated). I went to the closest physical branch and they told me 'blah dep flagged this, nothing we can do'.
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> online banks
You keep using that word and it's masking the real problem here.
The problem is that this company isn't a bank and isn't regulated as a bank. If they were a bank this wouldn't be happening. There would be recourse.
Use banks. Keep your money in regulated institutions. History has countless examples why.
I'm just gonna come out here and say 'don't use fintech companies'
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If they need source of funds, it's AML/CTF, not fraud.
Good luck with that. I had my account frozen at the biggest bank in USA, with no notice or explanation. When I went into the bank they pretty much said "sorry". Almost two weeks later my account was unfrozen again without notice or explanation.