Comment by PunchyHamster

13 hours ago

our govt farms the authorization out to banks (multiple of them), seems to work well. There is also a govt auth on top of that if you don't want that.

Banks can't just ban you, nor just take your money. The price they pay for being gatekeepers is a ton of regulation.

This is why PayPal for the longest time made it really clear that "we are not a bank". So that they wouldn't be subject to those regulations and could suspend accounts and keep the money.

  • Banks can just ban you if they whisper the magic words "suspected money laundering". They are theoretically accountable to a process that takes 500 years and 3 quadrillion dollars to reach a resolution, then they will unban you. You might notice both you and the bank will be dead by that time.

    • I actually know someone this happened to. While they did ban him from using the bank, they first warned him, gave him a chance to close out his open transactions, and then helped him move all the money somewhere else at no cost.

      The important part is that they can't just close your account and keep everything.

Depends on where. Here, basically all banks require MFA - where the only supported second factor is their app on an iPhone or non-rooted Android.

Meaning the requirement is just Apple or Google account with extra steps.