Wise, Revoult, Curve and other digital banking expat banking solutions

[ETF enthusiast]

Are there any others I haven't mentioned that you use?

I used Revoult a couple of times and seems like a complete scam. Curve is pretty good for Europeans and the English. Wise is decent for bankwire solutions. At least in my experience.

I haven't found a digital expat service that does businesses yet.

 

[Windows 10 Upgrade]

As far as I could tell from my neck of the woods, the only legit ones were Citibank and HSBC. Citibank was so fucking difficult to put money into if I recall.

Gotta go to the States this year so I have to convert my useless shell-bead currency to US dollars and just thinking of getting it all in cash because the fees for credit/debit cards are so steep.

 

[CaptainAutism69]

Revolut is fucked...their board said the long overdue financial report is basically bullshit. Probably going to go under soon.

 

[1996 Toyota Camry]

I haven't found a digital expat service that does businesses yet.

Wise does

 

[digs_privatemx]

My account has been banned. Is there any advice to avoid this?
(Revolut)
Use it via the app from the Middle East

 

[Preacher ✝]

Resurrecting this thread primarily to discuss how viable these kinds of services are for supporting the farms.

In the Farm Support thread several users have posted about success with Revolut:

Edit: I did the transfer via Revolut, was pretty much instant and worked via QR code scan

It still works lad, try Revolut if you don't want to deal with your normgroid bank.

While Wise has proven unreliable for the moment, possibly blacklisting the farms.

Any other Amerimutts tried Wise yet? I'm considering just using Wise from now on as billpay takes forever to go through.

Wise currently gives me the message "we cannot currently accept payments to this recipient". I'll try again shortly.

I tried inputting the info in the bank details section, but then it said it couldn’t be done at this time. Is there a Wisetag I need to input instead?

Searching the error indicates this is something that pops up when Wise has added a recipient to their blacklist.

Personally I was unfamiliar with services like these until today, but the appeal of something like Revolut is there. It would allow Kiwis to use SEPA even if they live outside of Europe, which is faster and less clunky than Bill Pay, Post Office Money Order, or Crypto for people who don't already have Crypto set up.

However there is concern about anonymity and the inconsistent reliability across different services illustrated above.

As I understand it Bill Pay and normal SEPA are anonymous in the sense that your bank knows you're sending money to the LLC for an account number, but not which account that number corresponds to. The LLC knows it received money for an account number, but not the identity of who sent it. So where do Revolut, Wise, and other such platforms fall?

Based on my research into Revolut, for an American to open account you need to download the app, give them your phone number, take a picture of your drivers license, submit to a face scan, and your home address. Additionally you may need to provide your SSN and proof of that address like a picture of a utility bill, but sources were inconsistent on those requirements.

That's all fairly standard KYC regulatory shit, but the bottom line is that Revolut is going to know who you are. However once you have Revolut set up your account on it is represented with a custom "RevTag" and a profile picture of your choosing, and thats all recipients have the potential to see.

Additionally theres supposed to be options to limit your visibility to recipients and other users of the platform further, on an account wide or per-transaction basis.

In theory this could mean that using Revolut with all the anonymity protocols enabled to send a SEPA transfer to the LLC might be the sweet spot of convenience, speed, and anonymity that many users are looking for.

But this takes us back to the concerns. We've seen that Revolut's competitor, Wise, is unreliable, can we trust Revolut to work? On top of that, a cursory search shows one of the main complaints about services like this are accounts being locked with little to no recourse, essentially stealing any money left in them.

If you have any experience using these services, good or bad, please tell the class. Thanks.

 

[YazeePro]

The LLC knows it received money for an account number, but not the identity of who sent it.

That's incorrect. The LLC owns the receiving bank account, meaning that it can see who sends the money.

The mechanism that Null implemented to ensure privacy is just making sure that users' payments and bank details are not linked to their KF accounts. In case of a potential hack of the forum, where attacks would gain db access, users' real names would not be revealed. In reverse, banks would not be able to link transfers to specific accounts.

SEPA transfers (whether it be through Revolut, Wise, or a traditional banking institute) are never anonymous. The EU has very strict money laundering rules that enforce KYC. So every transfer is clearly linked to two entities. The bank therefore will always know that you've sent money to Lolcow LLC. And Lolcow LLC will always know who sent money to them.

What you could do is to pseudonomyze the transfer, by sending it from a business account you control, or other such intermediaries. But when it comes down to it, the transfer could always be linked to you.

So, ultimately, if you donate through SEPA or Bill Pay, you will always have to trust Null, who controls the LLC. But then again, you're sending money to the man, which implies that you do have a certain level of trust.

If you want to stay reasonably anonymous, you'd have to donate via crypto (bitcoin, etherium, etc.).
If you want to be truly anonymous you'd have to donate via USPS money order or Monero.

 

[Preacher ✝]

The bank therefore will always know that you've sent money to Lolcow LLC. And Lolcow LLC will always know who sent money to them.

I know that, what I want to know is whether or not a Revolut SEPA transfer lists the accountholders name, or the RevTag.

Revolut advertises a degree of pseudoanonymity via its RevTag system. They claim that on a per transfer basis you can obfuscate your RevTag so that if you send money to someone they see a fake RevTag instead of your real RevTag. They also claim that you can control how discoverable your RevTag is on the platform. If you were to send money via Revolut to another Revolut user, it would only show your RevTag (or obfuscated fake RevTag) according to their claims, but does that also apply to SEPA tranfers?

As of now we know that for SEPA transfers from traditional bank accounts Null sees the names of who's paying him, but not the amounts or the memo numbers associated with the payments, and the banks don't know which memo numbers correspond to which KF accounts.

But traditional banks don't have a username system like Revolut does with RevTags. So when you do a SEPA transfer via Revolut, does it show the account holders name or the RevTag? When Null gets a SEPA transfer from a Revolut account does he see a name or a RevTag?

 

[YazeePro]

I know that, what I want to know is whether or not a Revolut SEPA transfer lists the accountholders name, or the RevTag.

I see. Now I understand what you've meant.

Serendipitously, I spent a long time in Europe, and I do have access to European bank accounts as well as Revolut. Let me just try it out.

for SEPA transfers from traditional bank accounts Null sees the names of who's paying him, but not the amounts or the memo numbers associated with the payments

If he is the receipient, Null would see the received amounts and memos. This must be the case as otherwise he could not match payments to KF accounts.

So, except if Revolut truly is obfuscating the identity of the entity sending money, Null always has the full picture.
What Null's privacy feature is doing is creating an information asymmetry between the bank and the KF database.

But let me verify that by transfering some money from Revolut to one of my European accounts.

 

[Preacher ✝]

But let me verify that by transfering some money from Revolut to one of my European accounts.

You're a hero.

While you're doing that, I had another thought.

Revolut does crypto. Now I know its not the optimal crypto platform but for people like me who've never done anything with crypto a platform like Revolut makes it very approachable. If I have to do KYC shit to use crypto then I'd feel better doing it for a banking entity like Revolut than some random online crypto exchange.

So my next question would be if you send crypto via Revolut how does your Revolut account show up on the chain of blocks?

EDIT: I went ahead and set up a Revolut account to explore the app and I have bad news. Crypto services are not available in the USA, and neither is SEPA because it wont assign an IBAN to a US based account. SWIFT still works and some other posts in the Support thread suggest that the account information Null provided for SEPA can be used for SWIFT too. Otherwise the plan of using Revolut to access SEPA from America is shot.

 

[YazeePro]

But let me verify that by transfering some money from Revolut to one of my European accounts.

Here's what shows on the recipient's bank account when you send money from a Revolut account to a non-Revolut account (heavily redacted for obvious reasons):

Basically, it's just a standard bank transfer in Europe. Like I expected, you can see everything: full name, address, IBAN, memo, etc.
Conclusion: no obfuscation of your identity through Revolut.

SWIFT still works and some other posts in the Support thread suggest that the account information Null provided for SEPA can be used for SWIFT too.

This should be possible, yes.
Since we know that the LLC's account is in Finland, you can find the guide here: https://www.revolut.com/en-US/money-transfer/send-money-to-finland/