Tell HN: Wise froze $40k+ in funds for 10 days and counting

And to add

- They do not offer live chat at the moment because they are too busy.

- The phone waiting times are up to 30 minutes. I've called them many times and they are completely unable to do anything as they are the 'support' team and it all depends on the 'verification' team.

- They respond to emails with canned responses, usually 2-3 days

- They respond on Twitter in public and by DM. In public, they make it sound like they really care and ask to DM. If you DM, you get an AI bot that might eventually put you through to an agent if you find the correct way through the decision tree. Then the agent will tell you that they are working as fast as they can and you should wait another 10 working days and see what happens.

I had weird buggy issues with Wise when setting up an account, which really turned me off. I ended up using Payoneer instead, which so far has worked reasonably well. They seem to ask for more data on a regular basis but respond quickly once it’s submitted.

Are you a PEP (Politically Exposed Person) or are you married or somehow officially connected to one?

I loved Wise when I first moved to Berlin from Seattle. After a few months though I just got used to Deutsche Bank and although their site is about a decade (or more!) behind Chase, I've discovered that being with a real bank is better in most ways. I just wish there was a modern, full service bank in Berlin - I would switch to that if it existed.

The current AML/CTF regulations frameworks can only lead to extremely opaque implementations and end-user experiences. For that reason alone, it makes sense to keep the bulk of your money in a place (meaning, a mainstreet financial institution) where you'll be able to get in touch with a real human and have proper ways of recourse should your account be the unfortunate target of overzealous fraud-screening algorithms. You don't want a FAANG-like random termination account procedures with anything related to your money, which is unfortunately the experience that many new-gen finance apps are delivering right now.

I know this won't help you much, but as a point of reference. Last year they've blocked my account as well and wanted some documentation/proofs for their verification team. Which I provided the same day, but then it took nearly 4 weeks to clear. Like you, I've asked them for feedback, but the response was the usual "The verification team is busy".

My business Wise card numbers mysteriously vanished a couple weeks ago without notification. Their exchange services are convenient, but I wouldn't keep any significant cash with them.

Sadly most regular banks will hose you on exchange rates and fees. I work for a company in the US but live in Europe. I've experimented with many ways of moving money and still the best by far is wise. I've tried a dollar account at my bank here but the fees and exchange rates were trash, not to mention that it's abysmally slow to move money that way. Wise has been great for me so far, but I'm only using it as a conduit from my us bank to my euro one.

Someone suggested I get a Wise account a short while ago because it's cheaper than bank transfers. But I've never seen any kind of 'account freezing' from my bank that wasn't to protect me (for instance: by doing wire transfers from three different continents inside of 24 hours). But I've had trouble with just about any other PSP/money transmitter service in one form or another and I'm very wary of giving them access to my accounts and/or using them for significant transfers.

I don't actually care all that much about the transaction fees, but I really care about my payments reaching their destination and the fact that my reputation is tied into my ability to pay people agreed upon amounts in time for work performed. On their end they rely on me and these middlemen are welcome to their cut but in return they should do what they promise. Wise looks particularly bad here because they overran their self imposed deadline, which is too long any way. Payments in flight should be dealt with inside of 24 hours, you either forward the money to the destination or you refund to the originator so that they can pursue other ways to pay. Because otherwise you are going to cause massive problems, both for the originator and the recipient.

The only excuse would be a court order to seize the money. Other than that I can't see any reason why a money transmitter would seize payments unless it is inbound credit card payments where they are afraid of chargebacks. But that should be a contractually agreed upon hold-back, not something capricious.

Bitcoin fixes this kind of problem. As you mentioned, those are bank accounts that you don't own. Those are NOT yours.

This is very unfortunate but it is the cost of being in a regulated system, hopefully Wise can resolve this ASAP.

> Some of the other stories have been from people who turned out to be doing things - e.g. cryptocurrency trading - where I can kind of see why their finance providers would maybe get suspicious of illegal activity.

As long as you're not involved in any crypto activity is not involved then this shouldn't be an issue, perhaps it is some intern at Wise who accidentally done this mess which would be bad.

I would say contacting Wise about this would be the next steps to resolving this, I am sure they will swiftly get this resolved.

Hope your problem will be resolved soon. For our company AML-check was usually done within a week and caused by fact that our game publisher that money come from was based in Dubai.

But if for some reason it take more than 2 weeks to unfreeze your account and they are not responding make sure to make complain with FCA. As Wise HQ located in UK it's the best way to deal with them:

https://www.fca.org.uk/

Yeah I personally only know that compaining to FCA does indeed work for consumers, but I pretty certain it will for business account too. UK regulators also usually reply fast enough.

> we get paid by a few customers around the world every month and pay out contractors also around the world

Which would look exactly like money laundering, tax evasion, terrorism financing etc especially if those customers/contractors are based in questionable countries.

So not surprised you've triggered their AML/KYC checks.

> We're headquartered in the Netherlands, not Cayman Islands or Mauritius

I love how the author makes it sound as if a company in the Netherlands simply cant do “dodgy” stuff by default - regardless of wether that country is a main drug transit hub - unlike those other countries.

To be fair to me the operation does sound like a potential money laundering scheme, particularity in the flourishing dutch drug and weapon smuggling trade. I am certain op is not doing it but Wise has to check his account regardless of his perceived privilege.

Hope it gets cleared out soon though as these types of checks are real pita when you need cashflow. If and when they make them they should be extremely prompt or else i’d move to a different bank.

They did the same to me once, they wanted an explanation what my surname means, my surname and date of a workshop where included in the transfer reference. They froze it and refused to release it for a few weeks. How do I explain what my surname means, it's literally my surname, they have it in sender details too? Every time I tried to explain it, my email history got picked up by somebody else, who didn't read the past emails and asked me the same stupid question again and again. Their CS never picked up the phone, I literally spent whole working day waiting during "busy hours". They responded to my email with 2-4 days delayed. I eventually told them to fuck off and refund the money. To prove a point I made exactly the same transfer using Revolut and recipient had the money next working day at 8am.

>Wise, my bank

Wise is not licensed as a bank, but rather a payment institution (or the local equivalent).

https://wise.com/help/articles/2932693/how-is-wise-regulated...

This affects your rights.

>We're headquartered in the Netherlands

I recommend Bunq, which _is_ a bank:

https://www.bunq.com/business

>I tried Revolut Business and Airwallex and got a generic "We can't offer you services at this time and you can't appeal and we can't tell you why" rejection from both of them

This is not a good sign. Who are your company's directors? Are any considered politically-exposed persons?

> Posting as a warning to others, but also if you know of any alternatives to Wise that serve EU businesses I am all ears.

I mean, it depends what you're trying to do, but if you are a company which wants somewhere to put its money, using a _bank_ is traditional. There are lots of banks in the Netherlands.

"First they came for the cryptocurrency traders..."

> Wise, my bank

https://wise.com/us/blog/wise-as-bank-account

"Wise is not a bank"

Keep money in banks.

This morning, my accountant warned me that Wise has frozen the funds of many of their clients, mostly freelance software developers, and they've been blocked for weeks now. This freelancers are not related in any way (except having the same accountant).

> but Wise, my bank

I also use Wise for my "banking services", but remember that Wise is NOT a bank, it's not regulated or insured as one.

For alternatives - doing cross border service is too much adminstration and legal bother for most of the new online services - try an old fashioned bank that has an international presence. At worst you may have to visit an office (from the Netherlands you could make the trip in a day for less than €100), but the service will be an order of magnitude greater.

Protip:

If you have a low volume of high amount transactions, skip the fancy Fintech (Mafia) companies and just use a good old bank account.

The international wire transfer fee is on par or sometimes even lower than Stripe transaction fee and once the money is transferred, it's yours.

It's important to remember that Wise is not a bank, they say so themselves: https://wise.com/us/blog/wise-as-bank-account

It doesn't come with the same regulation and guarantees as a bank. It's a financial service and using them as a bank is quite risky in my opinion.

> I tried Revolut Business and Airwallex and got a generic "We can't offer you services at this time and you can't appeal and we can't tell you why" rejection from both of them

I just opened a Revolut Business account for a fairly complicated (to them) structure, a Dutch CV with several partners and managed by a company. Took some back and forth with documents and chat sessions, but is done now.

So I wonder what triggered a downright 'no' in your case. Might also explain what the problem is with Wise.