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Comment by mppm | Hacker News Reader

> Any traditional local bank will usually speak with you first before opening an account. In contrast, neo-banks open accounts quickly and then rely heavily on automated fraud prevention systems, since manual reviews are costly.

Maybe that was still the case in 2015. In 2025, a traditional bank will ask for a ton of documentation, run it through the same (probably outsourced) automated fraud prevention system and tell you that unfortunately an account cannot be opened for you. At least that is a common situation for businesses that are too small to be important to the bank, but carry some compliance risk (international consulting, app developers, digital services, etc.). And then you are back to neo-banks...

This has been a trend everywhere, recently, but the severity of the situation differs country by country, so YMMV.

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Yes, I must clarify that my opinion is based on EU/Swiss regulatory practices.

However, this doesn't change the fact that mostly neo-banks exploit regulatory gaps for growth, which ultimately leads to issues like the one described above.

It doesn't lead to those issues, you get those issues with any bank or pseudobank, neo- or otherwise. It might be harder to get an account to start with with some more traditional banks, but that doesn't make you any less likely to get randomly screwed by them.

Levels of trust differ. Neo-banks, by default, have zero trust for their customer accounts, whereas traditional banks have at least some established trust. As a result, companies like Wise use fraud prevention systems that may flag your account simply because you logged in from an risky network.

Traditional banks can and do do exactly the same.

I'm speaking about Wise, as their logo is featured as a client of a fraud prevention platform. This makes it easy to imagine the kind of risk scoring they might use for their client accounts.

However, I'm not aware of large banks using such online fraud prevention services. For example, in France, there's one major vendor that powers most of the banks. If we look at their client area, there's no indication of fingerprinting.

Since device fingerprinting is included in most online fraud prevention systems, I can assume that traditional banks in France are not using these kinds of tools to screen accounts. But perhaps you have another source of information.

My 170-year-old household name bank does device fingerprinting. They even advertise it as a positive ("our security systems detect and stop unusual transactions, keeping your money safe" or something on those lines).

But with a traditional bank you can just walk into the office and have someone check why you’ve been flagged and what to do next, right? At least that’s my experience. With neobanks you’re at the mercy of algorithms, UI designers, and a customer support with little direct power when such a case arises.

> But with a traditional bank you can just walk into the office and have someone check why you’ve been flagged and what to do next, right?

"Computer says no". They'll give you the exact same runaround.

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