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by gloosx 401 days ago
Any adequate person would read their Service Agreement and stay back, because by accepting it, you accept that:

1. They reserve the right to reject, refund, or limit transactions "at our sole and absolute discretion."

2. They can impose and change limits without telling you.

3. When you "add" money to your Wise account, you’re technically sending money to Wise, and they then decide when to credit your Wise balance.

4. Even though you are the legal owner of the funds, Wise retains practical control over withdrawals, with several escape hatches allowing them to delay, limit, or reject transfers practically forever.

5. They are not reliable for anything, any errors, attacks or bugs, "unforeseeable" stuff. They can even close tomorrow and just say "goodbye" to all the clients and not be liable – there is a specific clause in agreement for that.

If you read agreement closely — Wise (and similar fintech services) often use legal language that gives them almost total control on your money, as well as reinvesting and getting interest on it while it is blocked from withdrawal on your account for, well, reasons...

I don't understand one thing; how can a Business accept such a risk? For what reward? Is there really no better solution to accept payments online? Why people keep using this middleman stuff?

1 comments

I can answer in our case: as an Australian business that receives a lot of USD, precious few options for keeping that money in USD _and_ having it accessible via a debit card exist. This is one of them. Typically, we don't let much money sit in the Wise account, because as you rightly say, their terms are onerous as hell.
Interesting, thanks for the explanation.. Here where I am located I can accept payments in any currency on my business account in bank institution and spend them right away, but maybe I'm just lucky with location.
Our main, regular, actual, regulated Australian bank does offer a "Foreign Currency Account" in USD (and many other useful currencies), but cannot link a debit card to it, and it can only wire transfer.

Our regular transaction account with our real bank can receive USD just fine, but it will convert into AUD upon receipt, and spent as AUD with the attached debit card.

It's more effective to be able to spend USD directly, as needed.

Wise's offering (and others like it: OFX, Airwallex, Revolut) offer ACH, FedWire, Wire transfer, and a Debit card.

Usdc + paywithmoon.

I don't understand why people nowadays allow to be patronized by private companies like this.

No, wise, it's none of your freaking business why I want to transfer 100 bucks. It's MY money.