I've done everything they want but their verification team is "busy" and needs "5 working days" to check what I submitted. That was 10 days ago - I'm not sure how many days per week they regard as working days.
Luckily, because I have heard of Wise, Stripe, etc doing this on a regular basis I very strictly transfer any excess funds to a real brick-and-mortar bank, but this could easily have caused huge cashflow problems if I hadn't. As it is, it's pretty hard to set up an alternative, pay contractors etc etc, but I figured it's a good reminder for others who might be going "Surely if I don't do anything wrong they won't do anything bad to me right?"
Some of the other stories have been from people who turned out to be doing things - e.g. cryptocurrency trading - where I can kind of see why their finance providers would maybe get suspicious of illegal activity. We (Ritza) just offer technical writing services, which means we get paid by a few customers around the world every month and pay out contractors also around the world. We're headquartered in the Netherlands, not Cayman Islands or Mauritius or anything dodgy, and we pay out to people mainly in South Africa.
Posting as a warning to others, but also if you know of any alternatives to Wise that serve EU businesses I am all ears. I tried Revolut Business and Airwallex and got a generic "We can't offer you services at this time and you can't appeal and we can't tell you why" rejection from both of them. I would love to know if I'm on some kind of list and how I got there if I am.
https://x.com/sixhobbits/status/1714531389326979112?s=20
https://x.com/sixhobbits/status/1713084385585504359"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Tell HN: Wise froze $40k+ in funds for 10 days and counting"}},"_tags":["story","author_ritzaco","story_37925678","ask_hn"],"author":"ritzaco","children":[37925781,37926000,37926151,37926207,37926215,37926221,37926228,37926243,37926341,37926350,37926370,37926375,37926376,37926377,37926383,37926391,37926410,37926418,37926421,37926447,37926451,37926456,37926466,37926728,37927134,37927981,37933125,37933492,37935791,37937785,37938318,37939512,37940187,37940552,37943370,37961461],"created_at":"2023-10-18T07:12:20Z","created_at_i":1697613140,"num_comments":111,"objectID":"37925678","points":156,"story_id":37925678,"story_text":"So I know there are a lot of stories like this and this is not the first or the last one, but Wise, my bank, froze all our main operational bank accounts last Monday. They want proof of 'the source of my funds'. I have been a client with them for over three years but apparently that does not count for anything.
I've done everything they want but their verification team is "busy" and needs "5 working days" to check what I submitted. That was 10 days ago - I'm not sure how many days per week they regard as working days.
Luckily, because I have heard of Wise, Stripe, etc doing this on a regular basis I very strictly transfer any excess funds to a real brick-and-mortar bank, but this could easily have caused huge cashflow problems if I hadn't. As it is, it's pretty hard to set up an alternative, pay contractors etc etc, but I figured it's a good reminder for others who might be going "Surely if I don't do anything wrong they won't do anything bad to me right?"
Some of the other stories have been from people who turned out to be doing things - e.g. cryptocurrency trading - where I can kind of see why their finance providers would maybe get suspicious of illegal activity. We (Ritza) just offer technical writing services, which means we get paid by a few customers around the world every month and pay out contractors also around the world. We're headquartered in the Netherlands, not Cayman Islands or Mauritius or anything dodgy, and we pay out to people mainly in South Africa.
Posting as a warning to others, but also if you know of any alternatives to Wise that serve EU businesses I am all ears. I tried Revolut Business and Airwallex and got a generic "We can't offer you services at this time and you can't appeal and we can't tell you why" rejection from both of them. I would love to know if I'm on some kind of list and how I got there if I am.
https://x.com/sixhobbits/status/1714531389326979112?s=20
https://x.com/sixhobbits/status/1713084385585504359","title":"Tell HN: Wise froze $40k+ in funds for 10 days and counting","updated_at":"2026-07-28T02:21:51Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"thepace"},"story_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["airwallex"],"value":"Which is the most startup-friendly bank for a newly formed startup? Casual online search turned up Brex and Airwallex. Mercury declined to open an account with no specific reason and it was not possible to reach a human to sort out the issue."},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Ask HN: Best bank for new startup in the US"}},"_tags":["story","author_thepace","story_47570558","ask_hn"],"author":"thepace","created_at":"2026-03-30T05:03:24Z","created_at_i":1774847004,"num_comments":0,"objectID":"47570558","points":2,"story_id":47570558,"story_text":"Which is the most startup-friendly bank for a newly formed startup? Casual online search turned up Brex and Airwallex. Mercury declined to open an account with no specific reason and it was not possible to reach a human to sort out the issue.","title":"Ask HN: Best bank for new startup in the US","updated_at":"2026-03-30T17:55:53Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"jjzhiyuan"},"story_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["airwallex"],"value":"Hi, I'm Zhiyuan Ju[1] from China, and since my graduation from university in 2019, I started contributing to the Apache APISIX project[2], and now it's more like an ecosystem including API Gateway, Kubernetes Ingress Controller, and Service Mesh. Also, its community provides WASM and multi-language support (not only Lua ).
In the past 2 years, it grows very fast in China, that's because it was born in China but donated to Apache Software Foundation after several months, now it's the Top-Level Project in the foundation.
For now, we have user cases[3] like Tencent, Airwallex, Weibo, WPS, NASA, and so on. If you have any demands when using API Gateway product, have a try on Apache APISIX
As an Open Source project, contributors and Apache Software Foundation's culture are the DNA of the Apache APISIX Community, let's give to our team![4]
[1] http://github.com/juzhiyuan\n[2] http://apisix.apache.org/\n[3] https://apisix.apache.org/showcase\n[4] https://apisix.apache.org/team"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Use Apache APISIX in production to manage API traffic"}},"_tags":["story","author_jjzhiyuan","story_30053170","ask_hn"],"author":"jjzhiyuan","children":[30053179,30053278],"created_at":"2022-01-24T02:53:49Z","created_at_i":1642992829,"num_comments":5,"objectID":"30053170","points":1,"story_id":30053170,"story_text":"Hi, I'm Zhiyuan Ju[1] from China, and since my graduation from university in 2019, I started contributing to the Apache APISIX project[2], and now it's more like an ecosystem including API Gateway, Kubernetes Ingress Controller, and Service Mesh. Also, its community provides WASM and multi-language support (not only Lua ).
In the past 2 years, it grows very fast in China, that's because it was born in China but donated to Apache Software Foundation after several months, now it's the Top-Level Project in the foundation.
For now, we have user cases[3] like Tencent, Airwallex, Weibo, WPS, NASA, and so on. If you have any demands when using API Gateway product, have a try on Apache APISIX
As an Open Source project, contributors and Apache Software Foundation's culture are the DNA of the Apache APISIX Community, let's give to our team![4]
[1] http://github.com/juzhiyuan\n[2] http://apisix.apache.org/\n[3] https://apisix.apache.org/showcase\n[4] https://apisix.apache.org/team","title":"Use Apache APISIX in production to manage API traffic","updated_at":"2024-09-20T10:20:15Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"arvindbr95"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Cutting integration test time from 2 weeks to 2 hours using Claude Code"},"url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["airwallex"],"value":"https://medium.com/airwallex-engineering/how-we-used-claude-code-subagents-to-cut-integration-testing-from-2-weeks-to-2-hours-8a19ed7793f8"}},"_tags":["story","author_arvindbr95","story_46240259"],"author":"arvindbr95","children":[46240285,46240750],"created_at":"2025-12-12T02:34:58Z","created_at_i":1765506898,"num_comments":2,"objectID":"46240259","points":6,"story_id":46240259,"title":"Cutting integration test time from 2 weeks to 2 hours using Claude Code","updated_at":"2026-03-05T23:10:03Z","url":"https://medium.com/airwallex-engineering/how-we-used-claude-code-subagents-to-cut-integration-testing-from-2-weeks-to-2-hours-8a19ed7793f8"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"adrian_mrd"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Learnings from 162 Job interviews conducted over Zoom"},"url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["airwallex"],"value":"https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-interviewed-162-people-2020-airwallex-heres-what-learned-kothari"}},"_tags":["story","author_adrian_mrd","story_26193554"],"author":"adrian_mrd","created_at":"2021-02-19T14:35:04Z","created_at_i":1613745304,"num_comments":0,"objectID":"26193554","points":1,"story_id":26193554,"title":"Learnings from 162 Job interviews conducted over Zoom","updated_at":"2024-09-20T08:03:24Z","url":"https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-interviewed-162-people-2020-airwallex-heres-what-learned-kothari"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"CloudyWeather"},"title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["airwallex"],"value":"Tempered CEO Announces Airwall, the IIoT Firewall"},"url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym8nPdS5pSk"}},"_tags":["story","author_CloudyWeather","story_21488310"],"author":"CloudyWeather","created_at":"2019-11-09T00:00:05Z","created_at_i":1573257605,"num_comments":0,"objectID":"21488310","points":1,"story_id":21488310,"title":"Tempered CEO Announces Airwall, the IIoT Firewall","updated_at":"2024-09-20T05:14:08Z","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym8nPdS5pSk"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"goksan"},"story_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["airwallex"],"value":"As a software engineer, I've experienced firsthand the challenges of working with the Airtable API.
As more non-technical users began using the platform in our growing business, the need for engineering to automate processes and sync data into Airtable grew. However, keeping track of process failures and ensuring that no unresolved failures slipped by was difficult and required significant effort.
That's why I created Airwalker, a toolkit that improves the reliability of processes using the Airtable API and helps you correct issues quickly and with minimal effort.
Here are some of the features Airwalker offers:
* Base schema timeline
* Request/response logging
* Edit & replay
* Custom automatically maintained TypeScript types
Airwalker is free to use right now, and I welcome any feedback or suggestions."},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Show HN: I built developer tooling for the Airtable API that I needed"},"url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["airwallex"],"value":"https://airwalker.io"}},"_tags":["story","author_goksan","story_35340169","show_hn"],"author":"goksan","children":[35340493,35340804,35340917,35341203,35341244,35341343,35341556,35343417,35345877,35347899,35359829],"created_at":"2023-03-28T12:54:01Z","created_at_i":1680008041,"num_comments":28,"objectID":"35340169","points":73,"story_id":35340169,"story_text":"As a software engineer, I've experienced firsthand the challenges of working with the Airtable API.
As more non-technical users began using the platform in our growing business, the need for engineering to automate processes and sync data into Airtable grew. However, keeping track of process failures and ensuring that no unresolved failures slipped by was difficult and required significant effort.
That's why I created Airwalker, a toolkit that improves the reliability of processes using the Airtable API and helps you correct issues quickly and with minimal effort.
Here are some of the features Airwalker offers:
* Base schema timeline
* Request/response logging
* Edit & replay
* Custom automatically maintained TypeScript types
Airwalker is free to use right now, and I welcome any feedback or suggestions.","title":"Show HN: I built developer tooling for the Airtable API that I needed","updated_at":"2024-09-20T13:37:47Z","url":"https://airwalker.io"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"tmfi"},"title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Electronics not included: Walking quadruped controlled and powered by air"},"url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["airwallex"],"value":"https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/airwalker"}},"_tags":["story","author_tmfi","story_26177504"],"author":"tmfi","created_at":"2021-02-18T08:52:21Z","created_at_i":1613638341,"num_comments":0,"objectID":"26177504","points":1,"story_id":26177504,"title":"Electronics not included: Walking quadruped controlled and powered by air","updated_at":"2024-09-20T08:01:52Z","url":"https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/airwalker"}],"hitsPerPage":50,"nbHits":19,"nbPages":1,"page":0,"params":"query=Airwallex&tags=story&hitsPerPage=50&advancedSyntax=true&analyticsTags=backend","processingTimeMS":10,"processingTimingsMS":{"_request":{"roundTrip":15},"afterFetch":{"total":1},"fetch":{"query":7,"total":8},"total":10},"query":"Airwallex","serverTimeMS":11}