I had an unpleasant surprise today, trying to top-up my account. My transfer from my bank was stuck, and when I emailed them asking what is going on, they replied:
kindly note that the outgoing payment of an amount of Euro XXX in favor of Revolut LTD cannot be executed, as the company deals with cryptocurrency. According to our internal policies and procedures we cannot execute any payments in favor of companies which are dealing with cryptocurrency.
I personally am not interested in crypto and don’t use it. I’m glad for those who do that Revolut provides some form of support. However, given the increasing regulatory scrutiny on crypto, it would make a lot of sense for Revolut to ringfence the crypto stuff somewhere else. I will have to stop using Revolut if I cannot actually send money to my account.
Yes, I remember someone reporting that a bank in Malta won’t allow transfers to Revolut anymore for the same reason.
I’m not sure how the legal situation is. In principle, IBAN discrimination is not allowed under SEPA regulations, but the situation might be different here because Revolut is an emoney-company. I haven’t looked into this specifically.
“internal policies and procedures” of the bank can’t going against EU law. Try writing to the European Commission to check if what the bank is doing is legal.
I’m sure there are. Currently, I’m not one of them though. Note that this same bank - Eurobank Cyprus - also refuses to execute my transactions to Transferwise “Because Estonia is a High Risk Baltic State”. Transferwise gave me German account details to use instead, which they also tried to refuse, but couldn’t find any grounds for, so they are grudgingly allowing this, albeit with several days’ delay “for compliance reasons”.
A transfer to N26 also met with resistance. Eurobank Cyprus appears dead-set to stop alternative banking methods by all means possible.
Complain: To where? To who? I have a job to do, and cannot afford to waste my day writing angry letters, just to be ignored. The reality today is that your money isn’t yours. FinTech isn’t helping, it is just a different set of people wanting their paws on your hard-earned money. If you want to play the game, you have to join their club, and follow their rules. Crypto is close to being either outright outlawed, or made so difficult to work with that it won’t be worth the hassle to process for day-to-day use. Money has no intrinsic value - not FIAT, not crypto - it only has value if you can spend it. And if you cannot spend crypto, it is useless.
There is a war on cash, cash-equivalents, and a war on crypto. Forget about winning or losing, the 1% own it all. We don’t even own the means to fight this war. Be a good citizen, do your job, pay your taxes. Everything else is being made impossible.
Small companies are allowed, as long as you don’t get any silly ideas about cross-border work, or making too much profit - only the large, the rich, and the well-connected can afford to rise above, the rest of us are crushed back into compliance.
Those who do not accept IBANs from other member states of the European Economic Area are violating European law as of 1 February 2016 (Article 9 of Regulation No 260/2012).
And this is what they count on. At least there are formal procedures for complaints and you will have to take this route if you at least want to try to achieve something.
If they dont change anything, you will have only have your only and your strongest argument. Close your bank account and take your business elsewhere.
Oh, I’m done with Cypriot banks. Wrapping up my accounts will time though, and I still need to eat, pay rent, and pay bills until that is all sorted out.