This is a familiar situation.

I run a SaaS platform where I sell plugins for WordPress. Recently, my PayPal account was suspended, and a balance of €80,000 was frozen. The stated reason is a violation of the Terms of Service. However, no specific explanation has been provided — neither what rule I allegedly violated, nor how I violated it.

I’ve searched through the lengthy documentation, but without clear guidance, this is an impossible task. My support tickets are no longer being answered, and your phone support refers me back to written communication — which, again, receives no response.

This lack of transparency and accountability is extremely concerning.

Due to repeated experiences like this, I now use fintech platforms only as proxy banks. All funds are immediately transferred to a traditional bank account, and only daily operational expenses remain within the fintech environment.

  No, the bank cannot explain why SARs triggered a debanking, because disclosing the existence of a SAR is illegal. Yes, it is the law in the United States that a private non-court, in possession of a memo written by a non-intelligence analyst, cannot describe the nature of the non-accusation the memo makes. Nor can it confirm or deny the existence of the memo.

  It’s not just illegal to disclose a SAR to the customer. It is extremely discouraged, by Compliance, to allow there to be an information flow within the bank itself that would allow most employees who interact directly with customers, like call center reps or their branch banker, to learn the existence of SAR. This is out of the concern that they would provide a customer with a responsive answer to the question “Why are you closing my account?!” And so this is one case where in [Seeing like a Bank] the institution intentionally blinds itself. Very soon after making the decision to close your account the bank does not know specifically why it chose to close your account.

In banking and money services, some things cannot be handled via the usual support channels. In these cases, it’s often more effective to have your lawyer contact their legal department.

You can find situation like this in twitter a lot

It's a shame that it's too good to be true, until you get blocked and then it takes weeks/months to get the account back

Certainty can't trust one single institution to hold all your funds

In addition to the ridiculousness of the whole situation, it is unbelievably ridiculous that their customer service is the same incoherent, pro-forma slop that's now the norm for retail customer service everywhere.

If you're offering financial services for business, you really need customer service that lives up to the name and, when a problem occurs, tells the customer the specific steps to take to fix it.

I’ve had all kinds of little annoying issues with Wise that cause me to be trapped in circles, but nothing this serious. Support is truly the thing that separates the wheat from the chaff. Everything is hunky-dory when it works, and the moment there’s a problem, you’re suddenly stuck in the Barbican at 3am with no signs, no lights and nobody to talk to.

Don't worry too much, luckily you've reached #1 on HN so they'll fix it for you within a day.

This is also a common experience in retail banking (not only wise) in the UK.

I put the blame on excessive regulation. Businesses are scared of crossing the regulator for fear of revocation of licence or high fines. Also the regulations themselves impose lengthy delay requirements on doing business.

What I've also found is the large incumbents largely skirt the regulations (HSBC for instance let's payments through whilst revolut spent weeks investigating them). Revolut spends the money, which they don't have, whilst HSBC knows they can pay any fine required. Regulation working precisely as designed.

What's the alternative?

I haven't been locked out (yet?). However, my account situation with Wise is similar i.e. I'm Australian and have been a customer since they were known as TransferWise. My documentation for UBOs is currently under review right now.

Hopefully I don't get locked out as well!

EDIT: Oh, I actually know who you are, Paris. I don't really have any industry connections these days, but I remember you from various conferences back when I was doing iOS development, maybe 2011-2015. "Hey, Wise! I can vouch for this guy!" Haha, doubt that's gonna hold up.

Very happy wise customer, i have had to go through KYC and other verifications from time to time. I happens with nearly all banks as services

The customer service is obviously an AI agent

very happy Wise customer, most banks face a constantly moving regulation and needs for KYC and have to put customers on hold and verify if for some reason it get flagged. I hope your problem is resolved soon

wise seems to be managed rather unprofessionally. An ex-girlfriend of mine used to work there and once joked about some of my transactions. It was all in good humor and nothing sensitive was involved, but it raised a serious concern for me: how can a random employee access anyone’s account, is that SO common? It feels like there's zero privacy

Honest tip: When I had a Wise-related problem, I reached out to @patio11 (famous HN user) for help and he connected me with a high-ranking employee at Wise. We had the problem resolved a day later.

10/10, would escalate again.

Are those fintech companies under any financial regulatory authority?

If my bank pulls any kind of stuff like that, dropping the magic "I will have to report this to the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority" gets any and all gears unstuck right quick. Because this is absolutely unacceptable, and my local financial regulator agrees (and levies substantial fines accordingly).

Might be an EU thing, though.

Ahh, I have fond memories of this. Their random KYC 're-verification' process (the lack of humans/computer says no) was _dystopian_ levels of frustrating. In the end I made a gif[0] and called them out publicly in the hope that they'd do something about it.

The service they offer is amazing when it works, but it'll be a long time before I use them for anything my business depends on.

[0]: https://x.com/boomskats/status/1407019117555683332

We had the same experience. So today, we are used to close our account ourselves before the 'neo' bank does it. No time to tell details now, have to drive to our bank to hand over a cheque.

As a private customer, they asked for more KYC (annoying but normal), then insisted on me providing a proof of address with components that my address (and any other address from my country that I know) does not have.

Luckily, this happened while they didn't have any money so I just found an alternative way of getting my transfer done, but I second the title: Avoid Wise!

Ironically, despite being a fintech and not known for great customer support, Revolut seems to be among the better options for international transfers, both in terms of fees and in terms of actually letting you make the transfers. (There likely will be a bit of KYC on the first transfer, but unlike with Wise, it actually worked. And from my experience, their customer support actually works and doesn't hallucinate answers!)

Is it possible that you used an unusual login pattern? Privacy IP proxy/TOR/VPN?

It seems like a false positive from fraud prevention systems, combined with limited resources for manual review on Wise's side.

Unfortunately, this is the reality of modern business banking, and Wise is not unique in this. You can find similar reports about most major EMIs and a fair number of banks. Banks have basically become an inefficient and unfair branch of law enforcement, without presumption of innocence and without due process. Every imaginable abuse is justifiable by Compliance nowadays.

[flagged]

Hey there, I work at Wise and saw this during my break. I'm really really sorry for the bad experience here. I just checked with my team internally and this has been fixed prior to this making front page.

If you are still facing an issue, can you reply to my comment - and I'll give you a call back on the number you provided our support team with. Thanks and my apologies again.

Long-time happy Wise business customer here (since before the name change). While generally great, their KYC flow needs serious attention. Received four document request emails simultaneously, mostly identical but with different links. In one flow, after uploading invoices, I couldn't upload other requested documents. The multiple, distinct forms asking for the same info were confusing. Got verified eventually, but the process was buggy and didn't inspire confidence. If anyone from Wise is reading this, please fix your KYC!

I once had a fintech account with a company that is EU regulated. It was a long time ago and I used it for a couple transactions that resulted in a 0.27 Eur dust balance. I didn't use it after that and a couple years before Covid they decided they need more KYC to keep the account active and I just ignored them.

To this day I still get emails about my remaining balance roughly every quarter. During this time (7 years!), I had multiple exchanges with support guys and one of them escalated. The back office guy explained that in order to access/transfer my balance, I need to do as much KYC as if I was opening a new fresh account. He also made me understand that there is a 2 Euro fee to move my 0.27 Euro balance.

So there we have it. Apparently, they can't close the account because it has a balance in it. And also they can't transfer the balance without going through KYC. As if all of that matter, it makes no financial sense for me to claim the remaining balance. Regulatory dystopia at full display.

Stripe had about EUR150k for more than 2 years, until they decided to pay, without interest, which they probably earned on top of my funds. Treat these companies as public toilets: Leave the funds as less as possible.