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Wise, Remitly, World Remit etc provide a cheap service for retail customers wanting to transfer modest sums for domestic purposes. That's their risk profile. I've used each service with little difficulty until I wanted to transfer larger sums in which case things quickly ground to a halt. For example, when my father died Wise suspended my account after I tried to urgently transfer $20,000 for funeral expenses, their compliance team then wanted bank statements, pay slips, ID etc. My bank, for 10 times the fees, yawned and transferred the money no problems

Wise, Remitly, World Remit etc provide a cheap service for retail customers wanting to transfer modest sums for domestic purposes. That's their risk profile. I've used each service with little difficulty until I wanted to transfer larger sums in which case things quickly ground to a halt. For example, when my father died Wise suspended my account after I tried to urgently transfer $20,000 for funeral expenses, their compliance team then wanted bank statements, pay slips, ID etc. My bank, for 10 times the fees, yawned and transferred the money no problems - @Brojeslov

When WISE suspended your account with their quick trigger finger, we're you allowed to just cancel the transaction and get access to your money again?

Last October I tried to transfer about $3K into my doctor's account and REMITLY suspended me! They wouldn't release the funds until after I did the same as you had to do. I wanted to cancel and just forget the transfer but they will not let me go; they transfered when their AML risk or whatever was satisfied.

When they saw I was not a ML,  they changed their attitude from totally arrogant to very friendly, then transferred the money and said not to worry in the future if I want to transfer larger amounts lije 3K. However, the aggravation isn't worth it. Maybe I would attempt another 3K but for 10K I would just do a swift bank transfer for now. I only use wise and the rest for $500-600 transfers.

@danfinn

Same as you, my account was ‘suspended’ so I couldn’t put money in or take money out. Luckily I had access to other funds, so was able to do a bank transfer for the funds my father’s overseas family desperately needed, and then resolve the issues with Wise including cancelling their transaction and recovering my money. My usual transfers through Wise are up to $500 and they attract no concerns at all - the occasional delay, like twice in six months the transfer has not occurred same-day. One of those occasions it took 3 days but I wasn’t in any hurry. For large sums I’ll use my bank and just cop the increased fees.

@Brojeslov

Same as you, my account was ‘suspended’ so I couldn’t put money in or take money out.

Meanwhile WISE had the use of your $20K for a period of time determined wholly by them. By freezing the transaction, they (unintentionally, I'm sure), got to earn interest on your money.

If they thought it might be a risk, why did they first take the money out of the account and then freeze it? They could have gone through all of the AML/KYC BS without holding on to one's money. And of course, one could have told them to pound sand, and one could simply transfer somewhere else, if they did not have the person's money held hostage.

Without making unfounded accusations, it does seem like these remittance companies 'coincidentally' seem to have a profit center on the side, making interest on relatively large amounts of frozen money they are holding. And I think this is happening quite a bit. Also, they may fear that customers will simply cancel any such transfer if they don't withdraw and hold the money first; then the remittance company would lose out on the profit of the transfers they arbitrarily (or by software algorithm) decided to freeze.

Interesting how AML/KYC just happens to benefit the remittance companies.

All for the good of humanity, in preventing crimes.

Also, I have noticed that, when wiring the money from the bank using SWIFT, it is much more customer friendly. Here they also investigate for security, for example, if you transfer to a car dealer's bank account in the Philippines for the purpose of buying a car, they might question if you have seen the car, visited the dealership and such, possibly more interested in protecting the bank customer from fraud than AML. Maybe both. In that case, also around 20K, the SWIFT agent did the questioning over the phone BEFORE withdrawing the money from my account. No remittance company profit center lol.  if there had been some long AML/KYC song and dance, I could have just cancelled it.

Yes, wire transfer costs a lot more but the cost in relation to the amount transferred it is insignificant and far more reliable. You just have to plan ahead a few days.

Customer service with Remitly and Wise is horrible.  There call centers do not know what they are talking about.  They tell you there are no limits, then when you try to do a larger transaction... there are low limits.  Thankfully my account was not frozen.

on the positive side, their fees are a fraction of the banks fees doing direct western bank to Philippines bank.  And this is why it would have been great if digital currency like bitcoin worked.  That does have its own issues I won't get into.

Happy banking everyone