23 ms·

Wise is deactivating Business cards in the US on Oct. 31st

56 points by omneity 3y ago

MisterSandman 3y ago
They mention that this is a side effect of the USD account number change they made recently. Which was also really stupid. I used to use Wise a smh direct deposit for my salary since I’m in the middle of moving countries, but this whole situation has made me swear off of Wise as a store of money. Which, to be honest, I should’ve always known, but still.
- dboreham 3y ago
  > Wise as a store of money They're not a bank, even in the UK.
- bomewish 3y ago
  What’s the best alternative?
  - dopidopHN 3y ago
    Crap. For my personal use case. I’m back to btc. ( I just want to transfer money abroad )
    - herbst 3y ago
      Why would you use anything other than crypto then?
  - dmoy 3y ago
    Depending on the amounts you're talking about, and the mechanism: Remitley, xoom, revolut, ofx, Atlantic (?). Lot of others. Just a straight wire transfer, but depending on your bank you might get wrecked in exchange rate. Interactive Brokers has extremely good exchange rates and fees. But, it requires you to have accounts on both ends, so it doesn't work the same way. For the top comment in this tree though (individual moving between countries), I'd lean towards IBKR since it sounds like they control accounts on both ends.
    - AYBABTME 3y ago
      IBKR can also be finicky when it comes to what they allow on their platform. They seem to want people to do stock brokerage, and not use their service for other things despite offering a whole lot of convenient features that suggest they want you to use them. I used them a lot for automated transfers, paying bills and keeping cash and they weren't happy about it.
      - evadne 3y ago
        I second the recommendation for IBKR which quotes FX rates at market compared to Wise. When the sum is higher, the differences can be drastic. As long as you run an active trading account with them it should be fine for occasional cash movements.
        lampington 3y ago
        Agreed, if it's not your primary purpose for having the account then it should be fine. I did a bunch of FX through them not long after opening mine, and they sent me a polite email telling me that I shouldn't do that, which was fair enough. Much better than the "freeze account first, warn later" attitude that many other financial companies seem to have. Now that I've been investing with them for a while, they don't seem to mind.
      - dmoy 3y ago
        Yup this is true. They don't want to be doing just that, and they'll get pissy if you're doing only that. Though, it's also a freaking excellent broker, so you could just... use it for your normal brokerage purposes too. They've also got a CMA with rates as good as basically anything except maybe Fidelity (which sorta cheats by sweeping from a mmf), so you can theoretically just use it for your normal banking as well. I don't actually maintain a IBKR account myself, but if I were to consolidate somewhere, it'd probably be either there of Fidelity. If I had to do forex more regularly, IBKR would win for me, hands down.
    - mtmail 3y ago
      > Just a straight wire transfer, but depending on your bank you might get wrecked in exchange rate. We sent 50 Euro to Bangladesh because wise.com doesn't support that country yet. Our bank charged 49 Euro in fees.
- weird-eye-issue 3y ago
  Should never be used as a store of money, only transfers. Hence their original name - TransferWise
tonerow 3y ago
I had the worst experience with Wise and their support this past week. So bad it almost sent me to Twitter to rant. It used to be an amazing service but something has changed and I’m swearing off it too.
- 0xy 3y ago
  Their support seems to be overwhelmed, despite transacting 5 figures a month through Wise Business support is non-existent. They missed multiple self-imposed deadlines to verify my account (they decided it had to be re-verified) despite the large monthly volume. In addition, the UX is deliberately designed to take your cash. If your account is currently limited and you can't send money, there is NO indication of this anywhere on the app or website -- not even in the transfer flow. It tells you that your money is now stuck AFTER you've sent it to them. That's right, if you are unable to send money they let you create a transfer and just freeze your cash as soon as you pay. Such an oversight can only be deliberate to pad their float.
  - trickstra 3y ago
    > It tells you that your money is now stuck AFTER you've sent it to them. Do you know any alternative which doesn't do this? Because I've seen the same trick in all of them.
- mingabunga 3y ago
  Odd, I've always found their support good. But this last week I couldn't order a card and they said they had to escalate it as we're not sure why it was happening. Anyway, I guess they found out, might have been unintended
  - iudqnolq 3y ago
    My new wise card doesn't work with contactless. Every time it says over limit, even if the amount is only a pound and well under the the limit in the app. Support just tells me that contactless works in theory and maybe there's been some specific issue with every time I've tried it so far and so I should just keep trying.
Animats 3y ago
They're a US-regulated money transfer service, so they can't keep your money without being in serious trouble. How do you cash out and close the account?
- techsupporter 3y ago
  The underlying account still works so you could do an ACH transfer out to another account if you like.
  - Animats 3y ago
    OK. The announcement reads like a crypto rug pull.
    - KirillPanov 3y ago
      Well it is a rug pull.
    - cpncrunch 3y ago
      No, they are a reputable company. This is just a routine change in the underlying bank they use for transfers.
    - mike_d 3y ago
      They say it only impacts you if your registered address is in the US, cards with non-US addresses will continue to work even in the US. Reading between the lines they were told to stop serving US customers by some regulatory agency. Clearly not a technical or upstream bank issue.
    - csomar 3y ago
      The announcement (including title) clearly mentions this about Cards, not the account itself.
webninja 3y ago
Sounds pretty unwise
_ugfj 3y ago
Wise has recently made a big batch of account verifications which overwhelmed their verifications staff and support both and left a company we do in Austria unable to do payroll. That was fun. Of course we moved that company elsewhere (in this case xe) and my brother moved his personal to Starling in the UK. Then they changed the US accounts with three weeks notice and I am like, you can't do this on such a short notice, WTF, I have outstanding invoices now need to be wired elsewhere, this is a gigantic mess. I completely expect at least one partner to screw this up in November, can't wait. Perhaps I should've moved this company to xe as well but I am exhausted. Why can't we have nice things. (And please, do not recommend Revolut, look up their 2021 audit and the lack of 2022 accounts, so far. Not touching that. If and when they can convince the brits they are gucci I will take a look, not until.)
- ritzaco 3y ago
  3 weeks sounds great. I got 3 days for the same. Also spent most of this month scrambling to set up alternatives to make payroll. See [0]. They ore still holding $40k hostage and returned or blocked an entire months revenue. Definitely enough to kill many agencies and would have killed us in our earlier stages. I have now tried Revolut, Airwallex, Payoneer, Bunq, OFX, and a few other alternatives. I am planning on doing a massive writeup comparing then all sometime soon. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37925678 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37925678
  - chx 3y ago
    Yeah it took them 16 days to unblock the Austrian company. As I said, that was fun. We had insane luck because my brother and I are operating an entire international network of small companies (mostly because you can't employ people otherwise and staffing agencies are too expensive) so we could pull money from another company to Austria temporarily but gosh.
    - jddj 3y ago
      Yikes. I've had nothing but good experiences, but this has been enough for me to reconsider our exposure.
danielfoster 3y ago
Wise never seems to take reliability seriously. I've also had issues with account numbers changing at short notice in the past. While a useful tool for transferring money, it is not a replacement for a bank and should not be used as one.
rvz 3y ago
This announcement sounds like yet another reason to not use Wise for Business. Not exactly a wise halloween treat for its customers.
benj111 3y ago
Any idea as to why? A court order or something? Withdrawing cards 'temporarilly' seems like one of the worst things a bank could do. But they're giving notice, so it's not like a technical fault preventing the cards from working.
- oldtownroad 3y ago
  No inside knowledge but the “changed” account numbers sounds a lot like their banking partner (evolve) withdrew service with a few weeks notice, which would explain “temporarily” withdrawing cards too — as they’re linked to Evolve. I’d normally guess a contract dispute (with Evolve leveraging their position, and Wise calling their bluff) but the mentions in this thread of overwhelmed verification and fraud, it seems plausible evolve withdrew from the relationship for cause. https://www.getevolved.com/ https://www.getevolved.com/
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Evolve recently dumped a bunch of partners over the last year. No context why from the outside.
undertheradaruk 3y ago
That sounds like it could be making people vulnerable :c did you ask if they had a vulnerable customer team?

56 points by omneity 3y ago

They mention that this is a side effect of the USD account number change they made recently. Which was also really stupid. I used to use Wise a smh direct deposit for my salary since I’m in the middle of moving countries, but this whole situation has made me swear off of Wise as a store of money. Which, to be honest, I should’ve always known, but still.

dboreham 3y ago
> Wise as a store of money They're not a bank, even in the UK.
bomewish 3y ago
What’s the best alternative?
- dopidopHN 3y ago
  Crap. For my personal use case. I’m back to btc. ( I just want to transfer money abroad )
  - herbst 3y ago
    Why would you use anything other than crypto then?
- dmoy 3y ago
  Depending on the amounts you're talking about, and the mechanism: Remitley, xoom, revolut, ofx, Atlantic (?). Lot of others. Just a straight wire transfer, but depending on your bank you might get wrecked in exchange rate. Interactive Brokers has extremely good exchange rates and fees. But, it requires you to have accounts on both ends, so it doesn't work the same way. For the top comment in this tree though (individual moving between countries), I'd lean towards IBKR since it sounds like they control accounts on both ends.
  - AYBABTME 3y ago
    IBKR can also be finicky when it comes to what they allow on their platform. They seem to want people to do stock brokerage, and not use their service for other things despite offering a whole lot of convenient features that suggest they want you to use them. I used them a lot for automated transfers, paying bills and keeping cash and they weren't happy about it.
    - evadne 3y ago
      I second the recommendation for IBKR which quotes FX rates at market compared to Wise. When the sum is higher, the differences can be drastic. As long as you run an active trading account with them it should be fine for occasional cash movements.
      - lampington 3y ago
        Agreed, if it's not your primary purpose for having the account then it should be fine. I did a bunch of FX through them not long after opening mine, and they sent me a polite email telling me that I shouldn't do that, which was fair enough. Much better than the "freeze account first, warn later" attitude that many other financial companies seem to have. Now that I've been investing with them for a while, they don't seem to mind.
    - dmoy 3y ago
      Yup this is true. They don't want to be doing just that, and they'll get pissy if you're doing only that. Though, it's also a freaking excellent broker, so you could just... use it for your normal brokerage purposes too. They've also got a CMA with rates as good as basically anything except maybe Fidelity (which sorta cheats by sweeping from a mmf), so you can theoretically just use it for your normal banking as well. I don't actually maintain a IBKR account myself, but if I were to consolidate somewhere, it'd probably be either there of Fidelity. If I had to do forex more regularly, IBKR would win for me, hands down.
  - mtmail 3y ago
    > Just a straight wire transfer, but depending on your bank you might get wrecked in exchange rate. We sent 50 Euro to Bangladesh because wise.com doesn't support that country yet. Our bank charged 49 Euro in fees.
weird-eye-issue 3y ago
Should never be used as a store of money, only transfers. Hence their original name - TransferWise

tonerow 3y ago

I had the worst experience with Wise and their support this past week. So bad it almost sent me to Twitter to rant. It used to be an amazing service but something has changed and I’m swearing off it too.

0xy 3y ago
Their support seems to be overwhelmed, despite transacting 5 figures a month through Wise Business support is non-existent. They missed multiple self-imposed deadlines to verify my account (they decided it had to be re-verified) despite the large monthly volume. In addition, the UX is deliberately designed to take your cash. If your account is currently limited and you can't send money, there is NO indication of this anywhere on the app or website -- not even in the transfer flow. It tells you that your money is now stuck AFTER you've sent it to them. That's right, if you are unable to send money they let you create a transfer and just freeze your cash as soon as you pay. Such an oversight can only be deliberate to pad their float.
- trickstra 3y ago
  > It tells you that your money is now stuck AFTER you've sent it to them. Do you know any alternative which doesn't do this? Because I've seen the same trick in all of them.
mingabunga 3y ago
Odd, I've always found their support good. But this last week I couldn't order a card and they said they had to escalate it as we're not sure why it was happening. Anyway, I guess they found out, might have been unintended
- iudqnolq 3y ago
  My new wise card doesn't work with contactless. Every time it says over limit, even if the amount is only a pound and well under the the limit in the app. Support just tells me that contactless works in theory and maybe there's been some specific issue with every time I've tried it so far and so I should just keep trying.

Animats 3y ago

They're a US-regulated money transfer service, so they can't keep your money without being in serious trouble. How do you cash out and close the account?

techsupporter 3y ago
The underlying account still works so you could do an ACH transfer out to another account if you like.
- Animats 3y ago
  OK. The announcement reads like a crypto rug pull.
  - KirillPanov 3y ago
    Well it is a rug pull.
  - cpncrunch 3y ago
    No, they are a reputable company. This is just a routine change in the underlying bank they use for transfers.
  - mike_d 3y ago
    They say it only impacts you if your registered address is in the US, cards with non-US addresses will continue to work even in the US. Reading between the lines they were told to stop serving US customers by some regulatory agency. Clearly not a technical or upstream bank issue.
  - csomar 3y ago
    The announcement (including title) clearly mentions this about Cards, not the account itself.

webninja 3y ago

Sounds pretty unwise

_ugfj 3y ago

Wise has recently made a big batch of account verifications which overwhelmed their verifications staff and support both and left a company we do in Austria unable to do payroll. That was fun. Of course we moved that company elsewhere (in this case xe) and my brother moved his personal to Starling in the UK. Then they changed the US accounts with three weeks notice and I am like, you can't do this on such a short notice, WTF, I have outstanding invoices now need to be wired elsewhere, this is a gigantic mess. I completely expect at least one partner to screw this up in November, can't wait. Perhaps I should've moved this company to xe as well but I am exhausted. Why can't we have nice things. (And please, do not recommend Revolut, look up their 2021 audit and the lack of 2022 accounts, so far. Not touching that. If and when they can convince the brits they are gucci I will take a look, not until.)

ritzaco 3y ago
3 weeks sounds great. I got 3 days for the same. Also spent most of this month scrambling to set up alternatives to make payroll. See [0]. They ore still holding $40k hostage and returned or blocked an entire months revenue. Definitely enough to kill many agencies and would have killed us in our earlier stages. I have now tried Revolut, Airwallex, Payoneer, Bunq, OFX, and a few other alternatives. I am planning on doing a massive writeup comparing then all sometime soon. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37925678 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37925678
- chx 3y ago
  Yeah it took them 16 days to unblock the Austrian company. As I said, that was fun. We had insane luck because my brother and I are operating an entire international network of small companies (mostly because you can't employ people otherwise and staffing agencies are too expensive) so we could pull money from another company to Austria temporarily but gosh.
  - jddj 3y ago
    Yikes. I've had nothing but good experiences, but this has been enough for me to reconsider our exposure.

danielfoster 3y ago

Wise never seems to take reliability seriously. I've also had issues with account numbers changing at short notice in the past. While a useful tool for transferring money, it is not a replacement for a bank and should not be used as one.

rvz 3y ago

This announcement sounds like yet another reason to not use Wise for Business. Not exactly a wise halloween treat for its customers.

benj111 3y ago

Any idea as to why? A court order or something? Withdrawing cards 'temporarilly' seems like one of the worst things a bank could do. But they're giving notice, so it's not like a technical fault preventing the cards from working.

oldtownroad 3y ago
No inside knowledge but the “changed” account numbers sounds a lot like their banking partner (evolve) withdrew service with a few weeks notice, which would explain “temporarily” withdrawing cards too — as they’re linked to Evolve. I’d normally guess a contract dispute (with Evolve leveraging their position, and Wise calling their bluff) but the mentions in this thread of overwhelmed verification and fraud, it seems plausible evolve withdrew from the relationship for cause. https://www.getevolved.com/ https://www.getevolved.com/
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Evolve recently dumped a bunch of partners over the last year. No context why from the outside.

undertheradaruk 3y ago

That sounds like it could be making people vulnerable :c did you ask if they had a vulnerable customer team?