The last few months, the financial institutions that I've been dealing with, some for years, have made my life a living hell. I'm seriously starting to think that they really don't want my money.
I know this isn't true because they're greedy institutions, but if you didn't know any better, you'd definitely think it.

┍━━━━━♥♠♣♦━━━━━━♥♠♣♦━━━━━━♥♠♣♦━━━━━┑

Wise is maybe not so Wise

I've been using Wise for years. I've had a Wise debit card for years. There was never an issue.
Wise makes it easier for people who get paid in different currencies to exchange this in house and then pay others in their own currency. I have a USD account, a Euro account, a CAD account, a GBP account, and since we've moved to Mexico, I also have a MX pesos account.
Handy dandy because I mainly get paid in USD but my bills need to be paid in MX pesos.
It saved me lots of exchange fees and ATM fees just because I can take pesos out at the ATM without the crazy exchange fees my other bank would charge.
From the top of my head, I probably saved US$50 a month or more thanks to my Wise account and debit card. Until recently that is...

It all started a few months ago, when a friend from Canada asked me to do some work for him.
There seems to be an issue with payments coming from Canada as I found out the hard way.
He offered several ways to pay me for my work, all of which weren't an option for me.
So I set up a payment account on Wise for Canadian dollars, and he transferred the money there. Not a problem. It was received and exchanged.

The real problem came when I transferred Euros from my PayPal account. Something I've done for months since that is how I usually get paid.
I have to add that I used to have much larger amounts coming into that particular account before, and it was never an issue. But somehow, now, transferring less than a 100 Euro, was...

All of a sudden, my account got flagged and I received a message that 'more information was needed'. All well and good. I thought I would have this solved in no time. But this wasn't the case, unfortunately.

┍━━━━━♥♠♣♦━━━━━━♥♠♣♦━━━━━━♥♠♣♦━━━━━┑

Never enough

First, they wanted to verify if my account details are still correct.
I confirmed all of this, they verified it all and thought that was that.

Not!

Then they needed to know my source of income.
Good. Not a problem. I really don't have anything to hide when it comes to that.
I wish I could say that I'm laundering thousands of dollars each day because my life would sure be a lot easier but I'm not...

So I sent them the information of where my income comes from, together with the proof of income they requested. My proof of income being statements from PayPal.
This wasn't good enough.
They then asked me for my bank statements from any other financial institution.
I gave them this too.
Not good enough.

Now, mind you, during all this time, they froze my money.
The website told me that if I didn't give them the details they needed within 2 days, that they would send the money back but this didn't happen. So the money that I so desperately needed for our day to day living was just stuck there...
And I'm not even talking about thousands...
We're talking about a couple of hundred a week for rent, food and utilities...

Since the documents I provided weren't good enough, I decided to give them a call.
Their customer service representatives clearly have a script in front of them because there is no personal touch. They read from the script and give you nothing more than what can already be found on their website. In fact, they actually refer back to said website to get no answers to anything. And they really don't care about anything. The phone call didn't help. If anything, it got me more confused than before.
I asked if they could just return the money, and the guy on the phone told me that would happen within 2 days, when it was already on hold on my account for about a week...

I decided to wait it out, since nothing I did seemed to be good enough.
Finally, after 9 days, they sent the money back to PayPal.
Great.
Nothing solved.
My account now had no hold on it, and I could find nothing about what to do next.
When the money was on hold, there were buttons to click to enter my info, now there was nothing.
So I decided to transfer a small amount, hoping to trigger their flagging system again.
It did. So predictable.

Again, they wanted my source of income plus statements.
I gave them the same things. Bank statements and PayPal statements.
And I waited. And waited.
5 days (!) later, they sent me an email. The documents were good (huh? So first they weren't but now they were? WTH?) but they could see large amounts of money coming into my PayPal account from two different sources. Which are essentially the same but I won't get into it now...
I'm not sure what they consider large amounts but in my opinion, just enough to get by can't be considered large. But that's just me. Anyway...
I sent them a reply, explaining that I work freelance for a company.
Now they needed a work agreement.
So I sent them that too.

Not good enough!

I swear, by now I thought they'd probably want to know the color of my underwear and whether I had shaved my armpits that day. We're entering the Too Ridiculous for Words Zone now.

Really.

Another 3 days go by without a word from them. Just that it wasn't good enough and they needed more. But never a word about what was needed.
The 5 dollars I had transferred was still there but this time there was a cancel button.
So I decided to cancel.
Sure enough, another 3 days later, the whole 5 dollars was back in my PayPal account.
And me, none the wiser...Pun intended.

┍━━━━━♥♠♣♦━━━━━━♥♠♣♦━━━━━━♥♠♣♦━━━━━┑

The Final Straw

I transferred the 5 dollars again, in order to trigger another flag on my account.
I managed to do so. At least that's a start I guess.
This time around, they asked for the same damn details again.
I sent them all I had.

Again.

Another 3 days later I received an email yet again. My documents were good but they needed more information. Well, I'll be damned. This time, they wanted my tax return.
Well very funny dude. But I don't have a tax return yet since I've only started with that company in May this year.
So what to do, what to do?
I decided to give them another call...
This time, a sweet Indian lady who had to repeat whatever she said about 5 times so I'd understand. And I lived in Singapore. I understand Singlish. But this lady? Nope, not a word.
She really was sweet though so I just shook it all off and showed her all the patience I could muster.

I explained to her that I just started with this company and therefore I don't have any tax returns yet. She then told me that I could also send them my tax registration form...
Now here's the funny bit. A tax registration form is filled out by the freelancer. Not the tax office. It's only to let them know that I started working for this company as a freelancer.
So in reality, you could just make stuff up.

In order to prove that you're not laundering money, it's possible to do this by committing fraud.

There, I said it. Does it make sense? Nope, not one bit.

So, finally, I've sent them what they wanted, all but details about the color of my underwear...
This was a week ago. Meanwhile, I haven't been able to use my account for more than 3 months.
Meanwhile, I am spending huge amounts in fees and exchange rates to get my salary out of my PayPal account and into my hands...
I have to work in roundabouts because I don't actually hold my physical debit card from my old (Irish) bank...But more about that another time. There's more...Much more.

I'm waiting for their reply. But right now, to be honest, I don't care anymore. They can keep their stupid Wise account.
Oh...One more thing. The one thing I hadn't taken into account was that the friend in Canada is a trucker...
Can you guess what triggered the flagging of my account? I sure can.
Thanks Trudeau.

┍━━━━━♥♠♣♦━━━━━━♥♠♣♦━━━━━━♥♠♣♦━━━━━┑

Conclusion

As I said earlier: this story isn't over. Not just Wise but my other bank(s) are giving me trouble now. It's a never-ending story with no winners except for the financial institutions and those who are pulling their strings. They are clamping down on the wrong people.
Those who actually do launder money or are involved in criminal activities are getting off scot free, while the hardworking common folk get messed around trying to prove their couple of hundred dollars aren't gained from illegal activities...

I wish the world would start to see what needs to be done. I wish that every shop and restaurant and little market stand on the corner would see what needs to be done and accept crypto instead of fiat currencies. I know we're still far from it. But God damn, I hope they keep pushing people to their limits so we get there sooner, rather than later.