Just checked my historic records as I remembered linking my Starling account to Coinbase in 2017.
I was wrong. My records show a reversed transaction to Coinbase, and a transfer instead to Nationwide, for transfer to Coinbase via my FlexDirect account.
Tried linking Monzo in 2018. Reversed.
I bottled it with crypto in early 2019, having seen my investment drop from £100, to £8.46 in bitcoin and £3.06 in ETH.
Checking Coinbase today, my Bitcoin would have been worth £92.41 , but my ETH £1.91
Anne herself said it in a video. She also said she wasn’t keen on crypto herself.
She has made a few comments over the years about how starling customers use their accounts. She said something about starling customers being investors and they mainly use Hargreaves Lansdown.
Interesting! Would love to see the video if you can find it! I’ll have a search myself later.
Starling + HL interestingly correlates our group chat’s participants too!
Quite a few of us used HL before swapping over to Freetrade. Some went back to just using HL, and others use T212 now. Another interesting Anecdote is that all of those HL customers happen to be the ones most into Crypto too, they just don’t use their Starling accounts for it.
Edit: after a very brief Google I did find this video from January 20 2021. It’s hosted on Facebook, though you don’t need an account to view. If you’re worried about tracking only open the link using TOR. https://m.facebook.com/AgathaTheTortoise/videos/147561740383198/
She doesn’t mention anything related to customer demographics here but I do find her stance very interesting indeed. She’s very open minded too. I like that.
Edit 2: for those who don’t want to view the video on Facebook I’ve included a transcript of the clip now.
We have not been offering services to people to send to crypto exchanges.
We have not been pushing that to our customers. We think that at the moment it is not something that we feel comfortable doing.
My opinion on that is changing, and I think if you were to ask me that question in a years time I may have a different view.
I don’t think it’s right for us at present to really encourage our customers to get involved in crypto. In a years time maybe, not now.
I find what she’s saying there a bit disingenuous. Personally I don’t believe it’s my bank’s job to deem what I should and shouldn’t be investing my money in (so long as it’s legal). Not blocking payments to exchanges isn’t ‘encouraging’ it, but what they’re doing now is actively preventing it.
Ah, fair enough (I just read the transcript). That it itself does seem fairly open minded then - but also doesn’t sit particularly well with their recent decision to totally drop support for payments to crypto exchanges.
I could understand the logic behind this if it were only Starling and Monzo, but what I find interesting is that a very large proportion of the big banks have also decided to simply wash their hands of crypto, despite having the huge fraud departments that might be needed to ensure customers can continue to use exchanges in a legal and regulation-respecting way. It seems just Lloyds, and I think maybe TSB, will still happily facilitate crypto payments. @N26throwaway I’ve heard that NatWest no longer support payments to crypto exchanges - not sure about deposits though, like the £100k you mentioned; perhaps they’re not quite as fussed about where money coming in is from as opposed to money going out!
Probably worth clarifying that I have no idea when this occurred as my friend never provided specifics. If NatWest have started cracking down on crypto, then I’d imagine it’s from a while ago! My info on Lloyds is likely to be the most accurate as another friend used them as recently as April to Withdraw £12k from Coinbase.
Ok, I’ve done some digging on Twitter and also some Tweeting of my own and have managed to confirm the following…
NatWest: Buying crypto with debit card Buying crypto by bank transfer / depositing GBP into an exchange Withdrawing funds from a crypto exchange to a NatWest account by faster payments
Lloyds Bank: Buying crypto with debit card Buying crypto by bank transfer / depositing GBP into an exchange Withdrawing funds from a crypto exchange to a Lloyds account by faster payments Buying crypto with credit card
HSBC: Buying crypto with debit card Buying crypto by bank transfer / depositing GBP into an exchange Withdrawing funds from a crypto exchange to an HSBC account by faster payments
What’s crazy is that NatWest allow you to buy crypto (with a debit card) but won’t let you take your profits out since they have ‘a zero tolerance for brokers and money transfer agents working in crypto-currencies,’ as they put it. Interesting to see HSBC take exactly the opposite position to them - you can’t buy crypto but you’re welcome to deposit the profits from it! And it seems Lloyds is the way to go if you want to buy and sell freely… for now at least.
In relation to their draconian restrictions, NatWest said:
We currently have these measures in place to protect customers accounts. We continually assess our policies and look forward to the regulatory environment becoming clearer for these types of companies in order to reduce the risk of banking them.
I wonder whether routing debit cards trough Curve would successfully circumvent HSBC and Starling’s blocks on debit card purchases of crypto? The merchant would be CRV* Binance for example, so I guess it depends on what kind of rules they have set up to identify the exchanges (The above is not advice or condoning breaking banks’ ToS, just simply a hypothetical question)
I believe I haven’t yet made a bank transfer to Binance (have so far funded though debit card), and yet have the highest level of verification. I have the option of withdrawing through linking a bank account or by using Visa Direct.
, but my ETH £1.91 
Buying crypto with debit card
Buying crypto by bank transfer / depositing GBP into an exchange
