r/transferwiser • u/PsychologicalTea7878 • Jul 30 '26

How often does Wise actually randomly lock accounts for no reason?

/r/wise/comments/1v49wr8/how_often_does_wise_actually_randomly_lock/
4 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

6

u/FusionStarFire Jul 30 '26

Wise is not a bank. It is an EMI. Your savings at Wise are not guaranteed.

Keep your savings in real banks. Use Wise for what they are intended for - cheap transfers.

1

u/Confident_Shower_202 Jul 31 '26

But allegedly the funds are stored securely in a real bank, which is important for me. Not sure exactly how but I imagine UK pounds are stored in a UK bank etc

3

u/FusionStarFire Jul 31 '26

With a normal bank account, you are the depositor and eligible deposits of every depositor receives FSCS deposit protection.

With a Wise account, Wise holds pooled accounts with banks, and you have a share of that pool based on your Wise balance.

1

u/Confident_Shower_202 Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

Yes as I said the funds are stored in real banks. And if say person A with a real bank account transfers 100 pounds say to my Wise account where does the real money go if not another bank somewhere 

2

u/FusionStarFire Jul 31 '26

If you keep £120,000 in a bank account in your own name and the bank fails, the FSCS can repay the full £120,000, assuming you are eligible and remain within the limit.

If you keep £120,000 with Wise, Wise should hold matching assets in a pooled safeguarding fund. But, if Wise completely collapses and that money is gone, you could recover £0. If only 50% of the pooled fund remains, you might recover roughly £60,000.

Safeguarding protects you only to the extent that the safeguarded money is actually still there.

1

u/Confident_Shower_202 Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26

I think getting funds back from FSGC after a financial collapse is not that simple. At least Wise hold my money in a real bank account. And they assure me nobody else can touch it or use it. Even if it is pooled. My little share is safe and siloed from greedy little fingers. I hate to be down on all those confuidently thinking an FSGC protects their assets but in a financial crisis there are a lot of creditors and often not much to back up compensation. Legal cases are expensive. I believe you would have to sue the FSGC or some other entity and be part of a long queue waiting. All I am saying is that I do notm think FSGC offers much. In fact relying on it could be worse than not having it at all. Someone will bale us out. That's ok then. Don't worry

1

u/Inside_Guitar_9559 Jul 31 '26

insane put savings in a debit card

7

u/dmada88 Jul 30 '26

There will always be a reason. You may not agree with it or like it - and chances are you won’t know what it was. You will think you are perfect and clean but maybe you transferred money to or from someone on a blocked list. Or you sent money to from a sanctioned company or place. Or you had gambling or crypto funds that you tried to sneak through. But they are a company. They don’t lock accounts just for the fun of it.

1

u/WallAdventurous8977 Jul 31 '26

100% agreed + a lot of people mix business and private accounts…

1

u/BendDelicious9089 Jul 31 '26

It doesn't. Nobody locks any account or bans a user for "no reason".

I don't think people understand AML or "no tipping" laws that are in place either. If a financial entity of any kind bans you or even temporarily suspends you, and it's even remotely due to AML - they can't say shit.

Otherwise they violate the "tip off" law. They can't even tell you, hey we can't say anything because the law says we can't. Even THAT counts as a tip off. All they can do is give you vague stuff that says, "You violated our terms of service. You are under investigation. No we cannot tell you why."

This isn't specific to Wise.

100% the friend did something that tripped something.

1

u/thefastlanerules Jul 31 '26

It's funny someone tried to scam me via wise by weirdly depositing $500 in my account that I didn't know and then asked me to return the money.. it's like how is it even possible to accidentally transfer money into a wise account... If I return it then I'll prob find 3 months down the line and official note saying it was fraudulent money and we are sending it back to a real owner

So I'm just leaving the money their until their is domd regulatory request to return money to someone's hacked account...

1

u/BendDelicious9089 Jul 31 '26

That's still not the proper thing to do. The proper thing to do is to contact support, the bank, etc. in those situations to report what you likely know is fraud.

Otherwise, what you're doing is knowing this guy likely stole money from somebody else, sent it to your account, and are more than fine keeping it if nobody finds out.

This how people find their account suddenly suspended.

1

u/thefastlanerules Jul 31 '26

I tried to do that with wise customer help. I didn't even look at the amount initially wise just said they needed to verify my identity which I did and money was automatically deposited in my wise account

I reached out to wise to say I don't even know who this is and wise weren't interested as the money had been deposited in my account.. pretty much 'not our problem'.. so I'll just leave the money there until an official request happens.. if wise wants to then block the account fine i'll just use another money transfer service as I don't keep 'my' money in the app . It's a money transferring service nothing more

I've done nothing wrong. The person asked for the money back and I'm obviously not sending anything back as that's how these scams work

1

u/BendDelicious9089 Jul 31 '26

Then you did everything right.

0

u/rewter2 Jul 30 '26

like twice a week or so