Thought for today:
‘A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.’
— Robert Frost
#thoughtfortoday #banks #square #embargo #stripe #annoyed #breathe
Online banking generally works very smoothly.
I have four online accounts and have been slowly shutting down my old traditional accounts.
The top performer for me has been Starling.
And as of this week, the bottom performer is Square – which is not technically a bank, it’s a payments company.
Without warning this week they embargoed payments from one of my overseas clients.
No appeal, no comment, just withheld payment whilst they “investigated” irregularities.
They said it would take 1-2 days to investigate and then a further 24 hours for the payments to be released if they were “satisfied”.
The thing is, all the “evidence” they asked for, was on their system.
The invoices and payments records I had to supply as PDFs, I had to download from them.
No communication during the period but they have now released the payments.
I understand KYC and AML regulations – I have twice been regulated by the FCA.
Square’s approach is “guilty until proven innocent”.
As a customer service attitude, this has left me cold and I’ve opened an account with Stripe.