(Transfer)Wise account

Hello,

one of the old, pending items is the setup of a (Transfer)Wise account. We’ve yet to see if and how we can include that properly in accounting, and as such, if we can make actual use of it. However, in order to setup an account, I need to provide data of all board members to them, similar to PayPal, Stripe and the banks.

That usually includes name, date of birth, possibly also residence (PO boxes often will not work), nationality, sometimes also tax ID.

From what I remember correctly, years ago, setting up such an account failed because not everyone wanted to provide this data (which is somehow understandable, being scarce with your data is a virtue actually).

The benefit of a (Transfer)Wise account would be to cut down costs for our international payments and also provide bank account details in several countries, conditional to being included in our accounting (see above).

Before I proceed, can all board members confirm to me here, or if they are uncomfortable also in private, if they would be fine to have that data shared? I can only proceed if all current board members are fine with it, and for future board, all board members need to provide their data, or we must close the account - similar to PayPal and Stripe.

Thanks
Florian

IMHO TDF should think out of the box and consider a platform like Revolut.

The basic „issue“ stays the same - we likely need to file all members of the current and future boards, as it is a bank account (or comparable), and the legal representative must be listed

Am I mistaken, or is this data only for Wise’s internal use and should never be made public?

Holding a position of authority comes with responsibilities.

Am I mistaken, or is this data only for Wise’s internal use and should
never be made public?

That yes, but data breaches can happen.

Holding a position of authority comes with responsibilities.
Also that, but Wise is certainly not a critical infrastructure, like a
“regular” bank account is. So the question is, what do we consider
essential, what is more a “luxury” that is not required? Keep in mind it
sort of binds all future boards, because if they don’t agree, we need to
close the account essentially the day of board change.

So, I don’t understand why this is something that needs to be addressed.

Having an account at (Transfer)Wise is something TDF was looking into already in the past, to make international payments - like travel refunds - easier and cheaper. As we have in particular travel refund requests from all over the world, this could be beneficial.

To do so, however, the individual board members need to agree to have their personal data given to (Transfer)Wise.

In my experience, Transferwise is extremely convenient, featureful and
moderately priced… until it isn’t and then it becomes nightmarish.

After years of usage, they suddenly closed the account without giving
any justification, refused to give back currencies as they were
(forced to pay them fees to change everything to EUR and get
everything as a lump sum)… and then they sent only a SINGLE CENT out
of tens of thousands of EUR/USD/GBP.

They closed all channel of communications:

  • No phone contact available (it was back before they were called
    Wise…)

  • Cannot email them, get automatic answer “we don’t take emails,
    please login into your account to contact support”

  • Cannot login into the account since they closed it off and blocked
    it.

  • They didn’t pick up registered paper mail sent to any physical
    address on their website, nor the registered address in the company
    registry, these all came back as undelivered.

So could not contact them about the missing money, could not download
last month’s statements, …

It took more than six months, and the intervention of the financial
sector regulator’s “issue a complaint about a financial institution”
service to get the money back. Even then, to add insult to injury,
they proposed as “apology” an amount less than the interest the money
they failed to return brought them, or inflation, over the 7+ months,
meaning they were proposing to financially benefit from their own
misconduct.

Also note they are not a bank, and the 100kEUR / 85kGBP / … bank
deposit guarantee does not apply.

Switched to https://www.currencyfair.com/ for cheap FX and
international transfers. They do only that, not the rest of Wise
services…

Uh, thanks for sharing, that sounds bad.

In any case I would not have a lot of money there, only what is needed for the required transfers (similar to what is accrued at PayPal and Stripe before being automatically transfered in regular intervals). Still, a loss is a loss, and we already had one dispute with a bank that did cost us time and money, and if possible, I’d like to avoid that…

I did not use them in the past, I just received feedback from several people who are happy with their services, and recommended TDF look into it, so I bring it up here.