Full disclosure I work there.
I would suggest using Revolut as an alternative. They are pretty good at getting problems resolved reasonably quickly.
I would suggest using Revolut as an alternative. They are pretty good at getting problems resolved reasonably quickly.
> "And please, do not recommend Revolut, look up their 2021 audit and the lack of 2022 accounts, so far. Not touching that. If and when they can convince the brits they are gucci I will take a look, not until."
By user chx at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38047491 (end of that comment)
I'll reply to their comment too, linking here, in case they see it and might have more to add on the subject here.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/6d2eef34-d414-49c7-8557-c43a3d9ab...
Revolut blocked my account when it contained the money I needed to pay a bill, and it took 5 days to unblock the account with atrocious customer support throughout.
The only means of contact was in-app chat, and I would often not get a reply for 6 to 12 hours. Sometimes the agent would abandon, saying it was the end of their shift, but I wouldn't be transferred to anyone else When I did get a reply it was so many hours later, and bizarrely in the middle of the night, that I was asleep by then. The agent would close the chat as I wasn't responding in a couple of minutes. This pattern by itself took days.
During that time I was asked to (and did) upload numerous photos of other bank cards that they requested, then they asked for more, then to do it again, and nothing seemed to progress. Just groundhog day with each new agent.
What worked for me in the end was social media: I replied to something from Revolut on Facebook. As if by magic, within a few minutes I got a message from someone saying I would shortly be contacted by customer support and they would unblock my account. Miracously the impossible happened and the whole thing from my Facebook message to unblocked account took about 20 minutes, no id or photos or long chats required. After 5 days burdensome nonsense that seemed stuck forever.
I took my money out straight away, and I've avoided storing more than a small balance on my Revolut account ever since. I use it daily but will never store much balance. They'd like me to use it as my main current account, for salary etc. No way would I take that risk with Revolut now!
Separately, after using the account for a year or so I was asked to provide a photo of valid passport or driving license (or maybe some other options I don't recall) which I had already gone through with them when opening the account. This prompted me to ask what they do for people without either, as many people in the UK don't have any of their short list of required documents.
Their answer was matter of fact: We don't provide accounts to those people even though we know there are many of them. If they had an account already, they'd have to close it. That really bothered me.
I was able to comply, though I too would fail now since my passport expired during the pandemic and I haven't renewed yet.
On a related note, someone recently sent me a small amount, a nice gesture, using Western Union money transfer. We all assumed I could collect the money from a Weetern Union service desk in town, because that's what Western Union is known for.
To my amazement I was unable to collect the money because they required types of id I didn't have, and none of my family had either. I'm a company director with public records, and countless bank accounts and other ways to transfer money, including Revolut and Wise. Yet I wasn't able to collect a small cash gift from Western Union, the service that is supposed to be for everyone. The desk staff confirmed, that's just how it is. We had to tell the sender they had to go to the sending office and ask for their money back. They struggled to believe we had no way to pick it up.
Don't get me started on Barclays... Rejected our business address "because we looked online and it says your address is a co-working space". It isn't, it's a big building "innovation centre" where many serious companies rent private offices (including private mail and reception service), which happens to have a tiny co-working space downstairs (which we were not using), whose marketing they found. Barclays were having none of it and said they would have to close the business account unless we changed address to another building. The agent confirmed if any of the other companies were using Barclays they'd have the same problem.
The troubles at Wise bother me as I use it a lot for cross-border business transactions and keep.a healthy balance in there in multiple currencies. It's been excellent for me so far, noticeably better than all other banks or quasi-banks I've used (many). I don't trust Revolut (due to the above experiences) and I don't know of another good and fast service with low currency conversion costs in the UK.
In my experience this kind of thing ("document from list A, another document from list B") is fairly common, as the UK does not have any sort of common identity card, plus there are lots of corner cases such as foreigners with residency rights. It's actually getting harder to do as more and more utility bills move to paperless.
These days, looking at the Barclays list from the sibling comment, I'd use a letter from HMRC, which I have, but many people in regular salaried employment don't (income tax is completely automated for most).
Other than an HMRC letter, it look like I don't have anything that qualifies as an Id document in the Barclays list. So I couldn't open a high street bank account today if I wanted to.
I actually couldn't vote in the last local election, since they introduced new Id requirements for that, and by the time I learned of the new requirements I had no way to vote. I've voted for decades; that was the first time I couldn't, and hopefully the last as well.
A lot of people in th UK don't have a currently valid passport or driving license, especially after not travelling for a few years due to the pandemic, or if they are young, or old, or never left the country. The other items in the list are unlikely for a UK citizen in the UK.
The nearest I had was a passport which had expired just a few months before but they wouldn't accept it. They required a currently valid passport. That's unusual; many places accept an expired passport especially if it's recently expired.
I really didn't expect such a restrictive id list to receive a small cash transfer from Western Union of all places. The whole point is you go in and show the receipt the sender gave you so you can collect.