I’m sure they’re already trying to get Anne to come out of the broom closet where she’s hiding in fear
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The only thing I think that could be complained about here is maybe the communication. But everything else I don’t believe they have any requirement to do differently. They don’t have to allow you to transfer money to crypto tested accounts. Individual or not.
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Neither is Coinbase, a 60bn$ corporation listed on NASDAQ who provides tax information for you to give to HMRC
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So you’d expect to be able to hire a hitman (hitperson?) or buy hard drugs on the dark web without the bank blocking the transaction? They have an obligation to stop the funding of criminal activities and as crypto isn’t regulated, they can’t take assurance in what goes on so they block it on a risk basis.
They still wouldn’t. It’s not the same as a detrimental change in the terms and conditions that you’re bound to
Those things are criminal
Crypto isn’t outlawed, we’re not in <insert dictatorship scared of being undermined by crypto>
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And yet they don’t have to deal with it if they don’t want to. I can go GBP > coinbase (Bitcoin) > scamcoin. And my money is gone.
Starling seems to have decided that the level of risk is to high for them, there’s nothing you can do about that except move banks.
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I don’t think there’s a DEX for Bitcoin, so you quite literally couldn’t
Edit: yeah, BTC supporting DEX isn’t a thing, so you couldn’t if you tried
This is what I’m trying to illustrate, if you really truly don’t know anything about it: Crypto is potentially an issue
But for everyone who does know that you can’t swap BTC for a scam coin, they’ll be okay
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The thing is, although crypto isn’t in itself criminal, banks cannot take assurance that the money isn’t being used for criminal activities once it’s in this untraceable form. As such, they choose to minimise risk by not associating with such unregulated grey areas
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They aren’t restricting how you can use your money.
Unfortunately there are plenty of legal precedents that the prevention of financial crime supersedes any other rights a consumer might have.
The HUGE amount of funds which are the proceeds of crime being exited via crypto (we’re talking in the millions here) will likely protect banks against any legal action here.
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And there Recchan is your answer, move banks, save yourself any further grief.
Bitcoin and anything on an exchange is extremely traceable and any major exchange is required to do KYC
Exception maybe being XMR, but I can’t name an exchange that has it
No they don’t. This falls specifically under the proceeds of crime act (2002) which has nothing to do with the FCA.
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There’s a such a difference between thinking you know what you’re talking about and actually knowing.
Good to see some knowledge on here rather than just a one person campaign that they think they’ll win.
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I disagree with your viewpoint on it, it’s not Starling’s responsibility to verify another legally operating company such as Coinbase is meeting its obligations
It does KYC and if it’s not meeting the obligations under the act you’ve mentioned: that’s a Coinbase issue
This just doesn’t matter. Starling don’t want to deal with it on a case by case basis using up resources. They’ve decided to resolve the risk by eliminating it all-together.
Starling doesn’t care if you know about crypto, they’ve likely already considered that option and dismissed it for various reasons. And they’re not going to change their mind just because you tell them you know what your doing.
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I think you’re misunderstanding here - when they’re blocking transactions to specific institutions then it’s very little to do with their KYC.
It’s to prevent the proceeds of crime being moved through their own accounts and to reduce the risk of their exposure to the proceeds of crime. If Bank A stops funds being exited via crypto then criminals will switch to Bank B, thus reducing the risk to Bank A.
The bigger picture is the problems posed by Bitcoin exchanges which means that it’s a preferred method of ‘cleaning’ money for OCGs and other criminal elements.
The easiest way around any of these restrictions, by the way, is to use PayPal.
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You should post this on the Starling sub-reddit for the people who don’t seem to understand.
I think you’re failing to understand the problem banks have with Crypto here.
It isn’t people investing money in crypto or people being scammed via crypto. These values in the grand scheme of things are pretty small. It’s the funds which are being moved and orchestrated by organised criminal gangs.
I think I can explain an element of this without giving away anything I shouldn’t - but if I’m a bit vague it might be because I’m trying to be!
A really common scam at the moment is a form of the safe account scam, and this involves hundreds of thousands being moved from a genuine account, usually through another compromised account at a different bank and then into a crypto exchange where the visibility of the funds is lost.
It starts with the post office delivery scam text/email which looks like you owe them a small amount of money in order to ensure a parcel will be delivered.
Dave gets the text and knows he’s expecting a parcel so clicks the link and puts his card/personal details (& sometimes bank details) in to pay the £1 charge. They always ask for your mobile number, and usually your bank - if not they can work out your bank from the BIN number.
This payment doesn’t actually go through a payment processor, but the card data is stored in plain text files on the scam websites (they use the same website files repeatedly and if you know what these are then you can really easily access the card/bank information).
They then use these card details at a merchant they know is 3DS secured, generating either a text message or a notification that Dave needs to approve a payment. Of course Dave isn’t expecting this, so starts worrying his account has been compromised.
Quite quickly after the notification Dave will get a phone call, from a spoofed number which belongs to his bank (which they know - as mentioned above). The scammer knows lots of personal information about Dave thanks to the scam website, they know the information about the attempted fraudulent payment (merchant, value, date, time) and manage to convince him they’re genuinely from his bank.
One Dave is happy he’s talking to his bank, they move onto the safe account scam and get Dave to transfer all his funds out of his account to another account the scammers control. Because they know which bank Dave is with they can talk them step by step through that specific app/website, leading further credence to the fact it’s a genuine call.
Dave is pretty stressed, anxious and desperate to get this resolved and so the usual warning flags don’t go off in his head.
By the time they do, Dave has transferred £15k to this ‘secure account’ in the meantime, the rest of the scamming team are doing the same to other unsuspecting people.
There might be 30+ people in the same call centre running the same scam (but more info about this sort of set up here: Confessions of a call-centre scammer - BBC News) which probably nets them about £450k every two hours (the length of time a scammer generally spends on the phone convincing somebody to follow their instructions) which is nearly always exited from the compromised account via crypto
This is important because to Dave it looks like the funds are being transferred to another account in his name (scammers tend to use banks which don’t participate in confirmation of payee, or convince the people they’re scamming to ignore the warnings) but their ultimate destination is crypto.
As I’ve explained before - a reach out email to a crypto exchange simply results in a response of no funds remain, whereas if you send money from Bank A to Bank B, and then it’s sent to Bank C then each bank in the chain can cooperate to try and recover the money. The exchanges don’t care.
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Once you pay money into a bank, it technically belongs to them, not you.
Most people don’t realise this but if you ever study accountancy, when a statement says £500 CR - it actually means the bank owes you £500.
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